Lethal Fractures
by Sashile
Summary: Sequel to Deep Lacerations. NCIS gets involved when a serial killer that CID has been following kills a Marine. When CID requests the original medical examiner and special agent, it'll be a reunion that Gibbs didn't anticipate. Gracy, mild Tiva.
1. Chapter 1: Opening

**Lethal Fractures: Opening**

_Disclaimer: I still don't own NCIS. If I did, I wouldn't be putting up with doing scut work around the hospital just because my residents want someone else to do it for them. I do own a couple of characters, though. And I own everything in my story on fictionpress. If you want to read it, there's a link in my profile. Wow, I must really be getting desperate for people to read that story. But I digress..._

_Background info: It's technically a sequel to Deep Lacerations, but I've been told it fits into the timeline with Of Jews and Gentiles as well (in that case, the order would be Deep Lacerations minus the epilogue, Of Jews and Gentiles, the DL epilogue, and Lethal Fractures). This takes place in the future, so don't be surprised if you see space men and discussions of warp drives (just kidding; if you want Star Trek fanfiction, I have a different pen name for that). By "future", I mean something around 2011--two and a half years after Deep Lacerations (excluding the epilogue), so about two years after the end of Of Jews and Gentiles. _

_The case: CID has been following a serial killer for eight years. When he kills a Marine, NCIS gets involved, as does the original medical examiner on the case and the former special-agent-in-charge. Oh, and there's Tiva, but it's not the focus of the story (unlike OJ&G)._

* * *

He knew her routines. He also knew her favorite restaurants, running routes, bars, bookstores, coffee shops, and the man who often accompanied her to those places. In a way, he knew everything about her. Everything that was important, anyway.

It was 2045, which meant that any minute, she would be walking the man—he didn't know the man's name, but that wasn't one of the things that was important—out of her impressive Chevy Chase condominium to his parked car. The man sometimes stayed the night, but never on a Wednesday. She had to be at work early on Thursdays—earlier than usual, which was already early—so she would walk the man to his car, then return to her one-bedroom, one-bathroom eleventh floor condo, brush her teeth, take out her contact lenses, wash her face, and be in bed by 2130. Maybe 2145 if she decided to check her email one last time before going to bed. Then her alarm would go off at 0430 and she would begin her day. Scripted. Predictable. Just like hundreds of women like her. That type-A personality that did well in a military environment, where scripted and predictable were the rules of life.

He felt his hands clench as he thought about her, and forced himself to relax. This would never work if he allowed himself to get distracted. He blinked once when he saw her leave the front door of her building, saying something to the doorman with a smile. She always had a smile when she exited the building in the evening. It was one of her routines.

The man was following close behind her. When she had stopped to talk to the doorman, the man had stopped, too, his hand resting gently on the small of her back. Silently, watching from afar, he felt his jaw clench in anger at the thought that this stranger, this nobody who didn't even warrant a name, could dare to touch her. How anybody could dare to touch her. She wasn't theirs to touch.

Again, he forced himself to draw in a breath in efforts to relax. Relaxed. That was how he could do this, if he were relaxed. If he just thought of this as another mission, not as something personal. But it was personal. She had made it personal. If she would have just let it go, he could let it go, too, but she didn't. She had to go flaunt her new life and this new man, this nobody without a name who dared to rest his hand on the small of her back when she stopped to talk to the doorman on the way out of her building, on the way out of her building to walk the man to his car so he could go home so she could go back upstairs and brush her teeth and take out her contact lenses and wash her face and maybe check her email before going to bed.

_Relax_. The word was like a mantra to him. He smiled at the word. _Mantra_. The first time he had heard it, he thought it was _Manta_, as in a manta-ray, and he wondered what the large aquatic creatures had to do with calming the mind until somebody had set him straight and spelled it out for him. M-A-N-T-R-A. Mantra. A mystical incantation that is considered capable of creating transformation. So now he had a mantra, a one-word mantra: relax. That mantra had gotten him through some hard times.

They had left the entryway to the building and were walking down the block. The man's car—a dark green Jeep Liberty, of all things—was always parked in the same parking structure, which had free parking after 1700, although the sign said 5:00pm. The man was never there before 1700, except on the weekends when the woman wasn't at work. There was free parking on the weekends, too. And holidays, but he hadn't seen if the man was around for holidays.

There were two ways to get to the parking structure. One way was to stay on the sidewalk and walk to the corner, then take a right, then take another right. The shorter way was to walk through the small municipal park, which had a swing-set and a merry-go-round and a sandbox and the beginning of a running trail that connected to the main running trail the woman liked. What the small park didn't have was overhead lights, so with the shade of the trees, it was usually pretty dark by 2045, even in August, when the days were longer. It was overcast tonight as well, which added to the darkness. He knew he would use the darkness to his advantage when they turned off the sidewalk to walk through the park. They always walked through the park. It was part of her routine. She never seemed afraid of the darkness from the dim sky or the shade of the trees. Maybe she thought that since she was in the military that nothing bad could happen to her. He had tried talking once to her about the dangers of walking around in the dark, but she had just laughed. She said she walked around in the dark all the time growing up. He didn't know if that were true or not; he didn't know her routines when she was a child, but he didn't see any reason why she would have lied to him. Well, why she would have lied to him about that. She had told him other lies, lies that he knew were lies.

He was close enough behind them to hear the murmur of voices, but he couldn't make out the words. It didn't matter; the words weren't important. They weren't part of the routine. Still, he inched closer to them, and when he began to hear a few words, found himself straining to hear more. He heard something about dinner and wondered what they were talking about. Maybe they were making plans to go out to dinner on Friday. They wouldn't go out to dinner the next day, because she didn't go out to dinner on Thursdays. On Fridays she had to work; she didn't always work on Saturdays. If she didn't work, she didn't have to get up as early, and she could go out to dinner.

Whether they were talking about dinner on Thursday or dinner on Friday or dinner any other day, they weren't going to have it.

He must have stepped on a twig or a loose pebble or something else that made noise, because the man stopped suddenly, his arm reaching for her protectively. He felt a surge of anger at the move. She wasn't his to protect. He had no right to do that. In a fit of anger, he drew the weapon he had been carrying in his pocket and shot the man right in the forehead, centered between the eyes.

The woman screamed. It was just a short scream, and then she was in control again. She was always in control. That's why she had her routines and her schedules, so she could always be in control. Still, her hands were shaking as she slowly raised them above her head, even though he hadn't told her to. "Please," she said, her voice quivering ever so slightly. He frowned; her voice shouldn't quiver. Her voice never quivered. She was always in control, and people in control don't have quivering voices. "Please," she repeated, and this time her voice was stronger. That was better. That was more in control. "I don't carry much money or wear any jewelry, but you can have whatever I have. Just please don't hurt me."

"I didn't want to hurt you," he replied, his voice suddenly sad. He heard the sadness in his voice, and it made him pause. Was he feeling sad? He didn't know anymore. He didn't know what sad felt like anymore. "I didn't want to hurt you, but you left me no choice."

Her expression changed from one of fear to one of confusion. "Do I know you?" she finally asked.

He felt the anger bubble to the surface again, and this time, no matter how many times he repeated his mantra of _relax,_ he couldn't control that anger. He lunged forward and wrapped his hands around her neck. He saw her eyes, the green that looked almost brown--it must have been the dim light--widen as she struggled for air. He decided to save her from the struggle, and with one swift motion, repositioned his hands and broke her neck. When he pulled his hands away, her body crumpled to the ground.

He frowned as he studied the lifeless body. She had fallen on top of the man, as if choosing, even in death, the man over him. In another fit of anger, he kicked at the man until they were no longer touching. No touching in life, no touching in death. Nobody should touch her. Nobody except him, and she said he couldn't touch her, so that left nobody to touch her. Nobody. Not even in death.

He knew where he could find her ID, because it was in the same place it always was, part of her routine. It was in the ID holder she attached to her keychain attached to a lanyard in the Army's digital camouflage print, with the large letters ARMY stamped all over it. She kept the ID on that keychain on that lanyard so she would always be able to carry them with her. On this warm summer night, since she wasn't planning on being out long, she wasn't carrying a purse. She never carried a purse while she walked the man to his car. She had stuck the ID holder and the keychain in the front pocket of her jeans, the lanyard hanging out against her leg. He pulled at the lanyard, and the keys and ID holder came free. He removed the ID from the holder and tossed it onto her body without giving it a second glance. He wanted to make sure that whoever found her would know who she was right away, so she would never have the injustice of being a Jane Doe.

The man, the nobody man who didn't warrant a name, kept his wallet in the right back pocket of his jeans, just like ninety percent of the right-handed male population in the United States. Unoriginal. An unoriginal nobody who didn't warrant a name. Unlike the woman, this ID he intended to keep. He would make sure this nobody man without a name remained a nobody man without a name. He didn't deserve a name, not in life and not in death.

He frowned as he flipped open the wallet. "No, no, no, no!" he moaned, dismayed at what he saw. In that clear front flap, where most men kept their driver's licenses, was a military ID. It shouldn't have been a military ID. Men in the military were not nobody men who didn't warrant a name. Men in the military were heroes, fighting and dying for their country, fighting and dying for the freedoms of those not willing to fight and die.

Feeling sudden remorse for his actions, or maybe sudden grief for this brave man who died too soon, a single tear fell from his left eye and ran down his cheek until it fell onto the man's clothes. He hadn't known when the last time he had shed a tear was before tonight, but he shed a tear for this man, this man who he killed without realizing who was killing. Carefully, gently, he placed that ID on top of the man's chest, making sure it was properly displayed. He wanted the world to know who this man was.

He was Staff Sergeant Nicholas Jasper, United States Marine Corps.


	2. Chapter 2

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 2**

_A/N: First of all, I need to apologize to one of my most faithful reviewers, **Rigil Kent**. He was actually the one who pointed out that OJ&G could be read as a sequel to DL, even though it wasn't written that way, and that's why I said this one could be read as sequel to OJ&G--even though it wasn't written that way. I have a mental outline for a sequel to OJ&G (a proper sequel), but don't hold your breath for that one. Med school is kicking my butt right now. Anyway, I felt the need to give credit where credit is due. And, in answer to your question, yes, I did study psychosis. When you're locked in a psych unit for a month (not as a patient, although there were times I felt it would have been appropriate), it's amazing what you pick up._

_Okay, that being said, let's get onto the story. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far; please keep it up._

* * *

NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo tried to control both the silly grin and bright red blush on his face as he stepped out of the elevator, half a pace behind his partner, Mossad Officer Ziva David. He hated it when she did that; one tiny little comment just as the elevator doors began to slide open, and then she'd exit as calm and collected as she always was, and he'd be as flustered as a teenaged boy who just saw his first naked woman. _Damn you, woman_, DiNozzo cursed inwardly as he nodded to a coworker who passed with a knowing expression on his face. He wondered if there was anybody in the building who didn't know what kind of effect Ziva had on him. Probably not, but considering the things they did together outside of the office, he figured he still had the better part of that deal.

He nearly collided into the back of the aforementioned partner and lover when she stopped walking abruptly at the corner leading into the bullpen. He was about to open his mouth to ask what it was when he saw what must have gotten her attention. He frowned as he tried to place the figure sitting in his boss' desk, then brightened when it came to him a second later. It had been two and a half years since they had worked together, and that had only been for three months. Sure, she looked older now, with lines around her eyes that could be explained as easily by the large grin on her face as the passage of time, and a lot more tanned, but the uniform he had only seen her in once before couldn't hide the tall and athletic build, nor did it do anything to conceal the auburn hair—now in a military-regulation bun instead of hanging down her back—nor the light brown eyes or smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose. "Close your mouth, DiNozzo. You look like you've seen a ghost," she finally said, her grin spreading.

"Two and a half years without a word, Gracy. What was I supposed to think?" he finally replied, a smile of his own appearing on his face. "You look good. Hawaii must have treated you well."

"Hawaii, yes. Iraq, less so," Major Sonja Gracy, MD, United States Army Medical Corps replied. She held up her left arm, which even a year after her return from her deployment, was still in a black orthopedic splint. "I got a war wound of my own now."

"They give you a purple heart for that?"

She laughed and shook her head. "As much I like to think of Humvees as combatants, I doubt my CO agreed. I slipped exiting the vehicle at the end of a convoy and ended up with a grade three sprain. The orthopods say it could be as long as two years before it completely heals. This split is actually a downgrade from my old one. Nice thing is, it gets me out of doing pushups for my PT tests for awhile. I hate PT tests. Completely pointless. Whoever decided that my ability to cut open dead bodies and look through microscopes was directly related to my ability to run two miles or do two minutes of pushups and situps is an idiot." She rolled her eyes, then quickly redirected. "I almost forgot. I brought presents." The brown leather shoulder bag she once carried around had been replaced by a camouflage backpack in the same digital print as her uniform, which had been resting on NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs' desk.

"The boss isn't going to be happy about you taking over his desk," DiNozzo warned as she dug through the bag.

"Don't worry, I brought him a gift, too," she replied as she pulled two packages from the bottom of the backpack. Judging by the smile on her face, he didn't want to ask what that gift was. "Ziva, this is for you, courtesy of an Iraqi insurgent. I wish I could say I took it off his dead body after I killed him, but my job wasn't nearly that exciting. Well, technically, I _did_ take it off his dead body, but I wasn't the one who caused him to be that way."

Ziva unwrapped the package to reveal a wicked-looking blade on the end of an ornate yet practical handle. She hefted it a few times before nodding her approval. "It is a good weight," she declared. A finger ran along the blade prompted her to add, "And sharp. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Dr. Gracy acknowledged with a nod.

"How the hell did you get that into the country?" DiNozzo asked, his eyes wide. "Aren't there regulations about bringing home war trophies?"

"I got shot at that morning," Gracy replied, "so I wasn't in the best rule-following mood. After that autopsy, I got drunk in my quarters. There are also regulations about that. You going to report me?"

"Nope," DiNozzo replied with a shake of his head. "But how'd you get it into the building?"

"They don't question things when a pathologist wearing a uniform walks in," she informed him. "Here's yours," she said, handing over another wrapped item. "This is from the exchange at Pearl Harbor." She could barely contain her grin as he tore open the soft package to reveal a package of baby's water wings.

"I know how to swim, Gracy," he informed her. "I just have a little difficulty when knocked unconscious first."

"I figured you could use these at crime scenes, just in case," she laughed. Shortly into her brief tenure with the NCIS Major Cases Response Team two and a half years before, she had to jump into the icy harbor at Norfolk to pull him out after he had been knocked unconscious. They both ended up with short stays in the Intensive Care Unit at Bethesda for hypothermia.

"Wedding gifts arriving in the office, DiNozzo?" Both agents and the pathologist turned at the sudden sound of the voice of one Leroy Jethro Gibbs. From the direction he was approaching, he could see DiNozzo and David, but Gracy wasn't yet in view.

"Oh," the Army officer said, remembering a nonchalant comment over coffee in Baghdad fifteen months before. "I didn't realize—"

"We're not married," DiNozzo interrupted hastily.

"Nor are there plans to be," David added, just as quickly. Gracy couldn't help but wonder whose idea that was; remembering the independent streaks of both agents, it was likely a mutual decision, if any decision had been made at all.

"Hell, they're not even officially living together," Gibbs scoffed as he walked into view. He looked exactly as Gracy expected, down the cup of coffee in his hand. She felt her smile widen. "I thought you'd call before suddenly appearing at my office, Gracy."

"Phones work both ways, Gibbs. So does email."

"I take it your new job started without any problems." The way he said it was more of a statement than a question, and Gracy wasn't quite sure how she was supposed to answer.

"Technically, no," she finally replied. "I wasn't supposed to start until Monday, but I got called in early. Seems there's a case that requires my attention."

Knowing that she was known as the one of the foremost experts in the country on knife wounds, Gibbs wasn't surprised that she would have been called in as soon as possible after her return to the DC area. "So what are you doing here?" As he spoke those words, the elevator doors opened again, revealing an elderly Scotsman clad in blue medical scrubs, a frustrated expression on his face.

"I was wondering if any of you have seen the forensic pathologist—ah, there you are, Sonja. I should have figured you'd come up here first," Dr. Donald Mallard said, seeing the camouflage-clad pathologist behind Gibbs' desk, a team of NCIS agents around her. She gave a small apologetic shrug before turning back to Gibbs.

"I just said there's a case. I didn't say it was at AFIP." After a short tenure as the Chief of Forensic Pathology at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, she had recently been appointed Deputy Director of Forensic Pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, returning to the institution where she had trained. "It's here."

Gibbs frowned, his eyes traveling between his medical examiner and the Army pathologist. "I wasn't aware of any cases, Duck."

"Well, actually—"

"It's not an NCIS case," Dr. Gracy interrupted. "At least, not yet. It's CID." Gibbs' eyebrows rose at the name of their Army counterpart.

"So if a soldier was stabbed to death, what is he doing in our morgue?"

"It's a she, actually, and she wasn't stabbed," Gracy said. She hesitated, not sure of what she felt comfortable concluding before she had even seen the bodies. She decided to go for it; after all, it could very well become an NCIS case as well. "CID thinks it might be related to a serial killer they've been tracking for almost a decade. Not counting this case, he's killed three female Army officers and their boyfriends. I did the first autopsy when I was a second-year pathology resident in January 2003, and the second when I was starting my forensics fellowship in 2005."

"And the third?"

She hesitated before stating, "The third was in December 2007." It took him a minute, but then he was able to figure out what she was saying: her husband, Major Scott Gracy, had been tortured and killed in Iraq the month before, beginning a long ordeal that involved a home invasion by a group of terrorists and wasn't concluded until her time at NCIS more than a year later. In December of 2007, Sonja had been on psychiatric leave. "CID found out I was back in town and asked me to do the autopsy."

"That doesn't answer my question," Gibbs finally said. "What's she doing in our morgue?"

Gracy and Ducky shared a glance before Gracy reluctantly answered, "We don't know if this case is related or not. There are a few things that don't fit the pattern, one of which is that the significant other is a Marine staff sergeant. CID was called for the case, and when I got the phone call requesting that I perform the post-mortem examination—at 0500, by the way, I have some words to exchange with a CID special agent about that—I gave Ducky a call asking if he wanted in. I figured that if the cases weren't related to our serial killer, NCIS would take over the staff sergeant's murder, and I didn't want Ducky to get blind-sided by second-hand autopsy reports. We decided to do the autopsies here because if I show my face at AFIP before Monday, they'll put me to work early, and I have one last free three-day weekend planned with my kids that I don't want them intruding on."

"If a staff sergeant was murdered, Gracy, we're going to want the case. You can tell your people that."

"I haven't been a CID agent for two and a half years, Gibbs. They're not 'my people'."

"You're Army. That makes you their people."

She scoffed at his words. "You saying that you can be influenced by anyone in the Navy or Marine Corps? AFIP doesn't work for CID, and they don't work for us. All we do is handle their autopsies when they ask. We do the same for the Air Force, and we'd do it for NCIS if Ducky ever needed a hand. If you have a problem with how CID is running their investigation, take it up with CID. In the meantime, Ducky and I have a couple of patients who need to be seen." She picked up that camouflage backpack and slung it over her shoulder before making her way toward the elevators. Halfway there, she turned back around to face Gibbs. "Oh, I almost forgot. Check the bottom left drawer of your desk." She gave him a quick grin before stepping into the elevator.

Curious, Gibbs reached for the bottom left drawer and pulled it open, and immediately began to chuckle, shaking his head slowly. "Smart girl," he muttered to himself. Lying in individual one pound bags was ten pounds of 100% pure Kona coffee, direct from Hawaii.


	3. Chapter 3

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 3**

* * *

"Do you have the x-rays for the second case, Ducky?" Dr. Sonja Gracy asked the NCIS medical examiner as she latched the door to the small refrigerated compartment where Staff Sergeant Nicholas Jasper would be staying for the next few days, now that his autopsy was complete.

"Of course, my dear. I'm looking at them now," Dr. Donald Mallard replied patiently. She turned to find him standing by the x-ray light box, his glasses on as he squinted at the black and white image there.

"If you had a digital x-ray system, like the rest of the Department of Defense, you could magnify the images," Gracy said with amusement.

"Maybe I'm just a little old-fashioned, Sonja, but I find something comforting about looking at the actual images on film. It reminds me of when my rural hospital back in Scotland first got an x-ray machine. Although us younger physicians were quite eager to test out our new piece of equipment, some of the older faculty were a little more reluctant—"

"Progress at its finest, Duck," Agent Gibbs said as he strode into Autopsy. "What've you got?"

"I hope you're not expecting that we've completed both autopsies already, Gibbs," Dr. Gracy said lightly. Her smile faded slightly. "Oh. That is what you're expecting."

"Our Jethro has rather unrealistic expectations, my dear," Ducky told her, "as I'm sure you remember from your time with us."

"It's starting to come back to me."

"But anyway, Jethro, a thorough forensics post-mortem examination is not something that can be rushed. There are many things that a body can tell you, if you only take the time to listen—"

"What are these saying?"

Ducky and Gracy glanced at each other before she spoke. "We flipped to see who would do the autopsy first, and Ducky won, so we did Staff Sergeant Jasper, although now that I think about it, that was probably the best approach anyway. It's most likely the chronological order that they died."

"'Most likely'?"

She sighed. "Time of death calculations aren't down to the minute, Gibbs, and Jasper and Captain Rodriguez, our Army officer, likely died within minutes of each other. I'm afraid that you're going to have to make do with our assumptions on this one, and before you say anything, I know that violates one of your all-precious rules." She smiled thinly. If Ziva and Tony were any indication, Gibbs had lightened up on his rules in the last couple of years. "What leads us to believe that Jasper died first is the cause of death. Jasper was shot point-blank to the forehead, and while we haven't even begun our post on Rodriguez, I am fairly confident that she died when her neck was violently broken. If we have only one assailant, the assumption would be that he would take out the biggest threat first, and that would have been Jasper." She paused. She hated to assume things without facts, but she felt the need to explain her reasoning further. "If this death is related to CID's other three cases, then our killer would have another reason to kill Jasper first. In the past, he seemed only interested in the woman—the Army officer—and not in the man she was killed with. Like Jasper, they were shot point blank, the women killed by having their necks broken. The CID special agent in charge concluded that the men were killed quickly at the beginning to get them out of the way so the killer could give the woman his full attention."

"So what do we have?"

"Well, as Sonja was saying, we have only completed our examination on our staff sergeant, who was killed by a 9mm bullet sent through the frontal lobe to exit through the occipital lobe."

"A slight downward angle," Gracy added, "which suggests that the killer was taller than Jasper."

"How tall?"

The two pathologists looked at each other and shrugged. "We'd have to know the exact distance he was standing from Jasper to be able to say," Gracy said. "We sent his clothes to Abby to do a GSR analysis, but that will only give us a range. Jasper wasn't too tall though, only 1.7 meters—"

"In English?"

"About five-seven. That puts him below average height for an adult male, which means over fifty percent of the male population is taller than him."

"I do know what below average means, Gracy."

She shrugged as Ducky took over. "The bullet passed through his skull, as I previously mentioned. I'm afraid CID didn't send Sonja to us with a bullet, so you will have to speak to them if you would like Abby to examine it."

"I'll do that," he grumbled. He was still upset that nobody there had called him about the case. "Is all of this consistent with the previous cases?"

Sonja shook her head slowly. "I don't remember specifics," she admitted. "And I don't feel comfortable looking through my old autopsy notes, or the notes from Alicia Gordon, who did the third autopsy, until we've finished with Captain Rodriguez."

He nodded and turned to leave. "Let me know when you're done."

"Gibbs," she said, stopping him. "I'm afraid an autopsy isn't going to answer one of the biggest questions about this case: what was _Captain_ Rodriguez doing with _Staff Sergeant_ Jasper?"

He smiled thinly, knowing what she was getting at—relationships between officers and enlisted, even those in differing branches or services, was forbidden on paper. In practice, though, things usually worked a little bit differently. "Hell, _Major_, I don't need an autopsy for that one. Same reason it always is. Sex."

---

Dr. Gracy placed her scalpel on the table after cutting through the last of the major blood vessels. She lifted the heart out of the chest and placed it on the scale. "Two hundred seventy-two grams," Ducky read. "Average size for a woman of Captain Rodriguez's height and age. And I'm afraid that does little to answer your question."

"About what she was doing with Jasper."

"Exactly." They both worked silently for a moment before Ducky spoke again. "I find it hard to believe that you of all people would have a problem with fraternization."

"Meaning what, exactly?" Her voice was harsher than she anticipated, and she toned it down before continuing. "I've never been involved with a non-commissioned officer, and I don't intend to start." She began to cut out the right lung. "Hell, Ducky, I got married a couple of months after I became an officer. And I married another officer."

"I didn't mean to imply otherwise," Dr. Mallard said gently. "I just meant that you hardly seem like the type of person to follow rules blindly."

She had to think about that for a moment before she spoke again. "I guess I don't really have a problem with it," she finally said, "and I don't think most people who do know why the rule exists in the first place. It's not an elitist thing—you know, a 'we're better than you because we're officers' mentality. I doubt the rule was made to keep the officers from mingling with the commoners." She smiled slightly. "As I understand it, the reason is to prevent problems in the chain of command. Even if the enlisted member of the relationship isn't directly in the chain of command of the officer, the military is a very hierarchal society—what if the husband is a major and the wife a sergeant, and the wife's commanding officer is a lieutenant? That puts the lieutenant in the awkward position of commanding his sergeant while not insulting a major's wife. And then there's the all-important 'image of proprietary'." She lifted out the lung and Ducky recorded its weight. "That being said, there are times and places where I think it's a little ridiculous. For example, doctors are officers, but we're not in anybody's chain of command, and we really have no influence." She removed the left lung. "And what about relationships between officers? As long as they're not in the same chain of command, there's no rule against a colonel being involved with a lieutenant, and I'd say that's a bigger power differential—not to mention larger age difference—than a colonel and a first sergeant." She shook her head slightly. "Other than the lectures about fraternization during Officer Basic, it's not something I've given much thought to. Like I said, I got married a few months after I became an officer, and Scott and I were never more than a year apart in rank."

"But you've been single for almost four years now," Ducky said gently.

"Widowed, Ducky. That's different than 'single'." She chuckled and shook her head slightly. "And it's not as if I've been putting much thought into dating."

"A young, attractive woman such as yourself? I find that hard to believe, my dear. I should think you have far surpassed the appropriate waiting period."

"I think they say a year," she agreed with a nod. "But after a year went by, I was still dealing with a lot of issues, and dealing with a kid with a lot of issues. Then I was deployed and made a strict 'no-dating' policy while I was in Iraq." She glanced up to see him looking at her curiously and shrugged. "We joked about 'deployment goggles' while we were over there. Same basic concept as 'beer goggles'—you drink enough, and every woman in the bar begins to look attractive. It works that way with deployments. You spend enough time in the sandbox surrounded by other men, and every woman you happen across begins to look attractive. We were somewhat isolated from it, being stationed at a hospital; and maybe me more so than others, since most of my patients were dead, but it was still there. It was best to just put up a very large and clear 'do not touch' sign from the beginning."

"I guess that would be an unforeseen consequence of allowing women to be deployed to war," Ducky commented.

"Right. And then after I got back to Hawaii, some of my friends tried fixing me up on blind dates. I went on two before I told them to stop." She chuckled again. "Apparently, there are a few things that shouldn't have been discussed on a first date. One is that I cut up dead people for a living, and the second is the fact that I have two kids. Unfortunately, my job and my kids are the only interesting things I have to talk about." She shrugged slightly. "Prior to those two unfortunate events, on my last first date, I still had a fake ID in my purse. Not that I used it, of course. I was far too scared about getting caught and losing my scholarship to even try. I think I just got one for the thrill of having it. But anyway, dating at thirty-six is completely different than dating at twenty." She glanced down at the body splayed open under her hands. "Maybe our captain wasn't having much luck on the dating scene, either. I would never regret my decision to go into the Army, but being a woman in the military isn't always easy. There are unspoken differences in the expectations for what you do and how you act. Boys could be boys and do whatever they want—and there were times that Scott seemed bound and determined to prove _that—_but women are expected to be physically fit, mentally disciplined, good leaders and role models, and are _still_ expected to be feminine. Maybe while dealing with all of that, Rodriguez meets this guy—maybe through work, maybe not—who is clean-cut and respectful and doesn't question what she does for a living or her motives for going into the military. You know, there are some days I think that if I came across a man like that, I'd snatch him up without a second thought."


	4. Chapter 4

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 4**

* * *

While Ducky and Gracy were a few floors away in Autopsy spending some quality time with Captain Jessa Rodriguez, Gibbs was up at his desk, spending some less-than-quality time on the phone with the CID special agent in charge of the investigation. "I know you think this case might be related to some others you've had," he said, irate at the young-sounding agent on the other side of the phone line. "But what I want to know is why it is that a US Marine was found murdered, and I had to find out about it from an Army pathologist."

There was a pause at the other end before the CID agent replied, "_Dr. Gracy shouldn't have said anything to you about the case._"

"Well, she didn't really have a choice, seeing as she showed up in my morgue to do the autopsy."

It was clear that the CID agent was pretty far out of the loop when it came to the autopsies and the pathologist he requested perform them. "_What was she doing at NCIS?_"

"Well, Agent Wang—"

"_It's pronounced 'Wong', Agent Gibbs._"

"—All of these medical examiners talk to each other, and when Dr. Gracy saw that one of your victims was a Marine staff sergeant, she called my medical examiner. Besides, you requested a medical examiner who's still on leave. You been working at CID long?"

"_I transferred from the FBI seven months ago_." He sounded defensive at that.

"You'll learn pretty quickly that when someone in the Army is on leave, she's not going to show up at work, no matter who's asking. If you wanted the autopsy done at AFIP, you should have asked for another medical examiner."

"_Dr. Gracy is the pathologist on record for the first two cases—_"

"Yeah, I know. She told me."

There was a pause at the other end. "_What do you want?_" Wang finally asked, his voice resigned.

"The Jasper case," Gibbs replied.

"_Can't do it. It's part of our case._"

"Your case? Hell, you've only been at CID for seven months! How did you end up with a serial killer who started eight years ago?"

"_The previous special agent in charge has since retired, Agent Gibbs._"

Of course he did. That was one of the problems with serial killers—or, as the FBI liked to call them now, pattern killers. Their careers often out-lasted those of the investigators tracking them. "At the very least, I want my team in on this. We'll run a joint investigation."

There was another pause. "_No offense, Agent Gibbs, but I've been warned about how you run 'joint investigations'. This is a CID case, and that's that._"

Gibbs smiled suddenly as he remembered how he kept a different case from the FBI many years ago. "I don't know how much of a case you have without the bodies, Wang." His words were met with silence. "In case you've forgotten, they're currently in my morgue."

There was another stretch of silence before: "_You're a real bastard, Gibbs_."

This time, he laughed out loud. "You're not the first to say that." He didn't mention that the pathologist that Wang had sent his way was on that list.

"_I'd be surprised if I were. Fine. You share the bodies, we'll share the information. I have a bad feeling about this already. Like I've just sold my soul to the devil_."

"I'm not interested in your soul, Wang. Just your case."

* * *

Although Ducky and Gracy had started the autopsies on Staff Sergeant Jasper and Captain Rodriguez around 0900, neither had returned to the bullpen or called Gibbs by 1600, prompting him to head down to Autopsy to see what they were up to. He found both pathologists and Jimmy Palmer gathered by the lightbox, an x-ray of a neck the only film up for display. On a nearby desk and on two rolling tables, they had placed laptops that Gibbs hadn't realized Ducky had, each of which had another x-ray of another neck. Neither Ducky nor Gracy was wearing their full autopsy gear—both were just wearing simple blue scrubs, with Gracy also sporting a sturdy black wrist-brace that extended halfway up to her elbow—and there were no bodies in sight, telling Gibbs that they were already done with the dirty work.

"What about Macintosh?" Gracy was asking, and Gibbs wondered for a second why they were talking about computers.

"On visual inspection, it does look very similar to the others," Ducky commented, leaning close to one of the computer screens. Gibbs guessed that Macintosh was one of the previous victims.

"What does the forensic anthropologist's report say?" There was a shuffling of papers before Ducky spoke again.

"I'm not seeing a report, my dear."

"I know there's a report," Gracy replied, turning her attention from the diagram she was studying to the file in front of Ducky. "I may have just been a second-year resident, but I know I sent the bones to the anthropologist at AFIP." So Macintosh was the first victim.

"That may be true, but I still don't see a report."

"_Scheisse_," she muttered under her breath. Gibbs smiled thinly as he remembered her tendency to swear in German. "It must have been displaced. It _was _more than eight years ago. Let's see, in 2003, our anthropologist was... Bennett? No, he didn't come until the next year. I wonder if that was in the period where we didn't have an in-house forensic anthropologist, in which case, we would have consulted with the Smithsonian. I'll have to ask Lester if he has copies of our records from back then."

"Lester?"

Both Ducky and Gracy turned to face Gibbs, still standing by the door. "Dr. Van Lester," Gracy replied. "Forensic anthropologist at AFIP. He does nothing but study bones. If he can't find the report, he can probably still read the x-rays we have, but I feel more confident knowing an expert has actually laid hands on the bones themselves."

"You can't analyze them yourself?"

"I can tell you that Captain Rodriguez, like Captain Macintosh, Second Lieutenant Hamilton, and First Lieutenant Olafsen, was killed when her spinal cord was severed in the cervical region due to a violent twisting motion," she informed him before shrugging. "But that's just about all I can tell you. Lester would be able to give you an approximate amount of force used, angle of the force—which would help us figure out how tall our assailant is—the direction, where the assailant was facing in relation to the victim, and probably some other random facts that I couldn't begin to guess."

"What do you have from the previous victims?"

Gracy pointed at the monitor Ducky had been studying. "Captain Irene Macintosh, twenty-seven years old, nurse in the physical medicine and rehabilitation unit at Walter Reed. Died on January 7, 2003, cause of death is atlanto-axial dislocation leading to acute neurogenic shock. Until I find that anthropology report, that's all I can tell you. Second Lieutenant Amanda Hamilton," another monitor, "twenty-three, quartermaster at Ft. Belvoir. Died October 1, 2005, atlanto-axial dislocation leading to acute neurogenic shock. Dr. Bennett concluded that it was counter-clockwise motion that broke her neck. And finally, First Lieutenant Annaliese Olafsen, thirty years old, instructor at the Armed Forces School of Music. Died December 24, 2007 of—"

"Atlanto-axial dislocation leading to acute neurogenic shock."

"It would be kinda funny if it weren't, but yes. Dr. Lester was the forensic anthropologist on that one, and concluded that it was, like Hamilton, a counter-clockwise motion." She paused as she studied the x-rays. "These fractures, Gibbs, the way their necks were broken... do you know how to do that?"

He sensed that she had a reason for asking, and it wasn't morbid curiosity or unease at his abilities to take a life. That was a conversation that they had already had once, years before. "Yeah," he finally confirmed.

"Is it something a lot people can do?"

"It's something that a lot of people are _trained_ to do," he replied. "Whether or not they can usually isn't tested." She nodded; hand-to-hand combat, being close enough to your enemy to literally snap his neck, was something that was taught in the hopes that it wouldn't have to be used. Being that close to somebody who was just as willing to kill you as you were to kill him was never that good of an idea.

"Can you demonstrate?"

He looked amused at the question. "On you?"

She made a dismissive sound. "Of course not. My neck is far too valuable." She bolted a thumb in the direction of the young autopsy assistant. "Use Palmer."

"What? No!" he protested, his hands covering his neck protectively. Now it was Gracy's turn to be amused.

"I'm just kidding, Palmer. Ducky, do you have a CPR dummy handy?" Ducky pointed to the back room, and Palmer rushed to get it, probably thinking that failure to find it would result in his neck—literally. He returned with it a moment later, and Gracy set the armless torso up as if it were sitting on the autopsy table. "Okay, Gibbs. I don't want you to actually break its neck, but I want to see how it's done."

He positioned himself behind the dummy, but when he reached for it, knocked it over. After setting it up again, he did the same thing. He shook his head. "This isn't going to work."

"Okay, fine," Gracy replied with a sigh. "You can use my neck. But like I said, don't break it. The Army would not be happy with you if you do. They still own it for another year."

He stood behind her, placing his right hand on her jaw and left on the back of her head. "And then twist." He turned her head gently to the left, just as the victims' heads would have turned.

"So our assailant was right-handed," Palmer said excitedly.

"Not necessarily," Gracy said in a warning tone as Gibbs took a step back. "I did a study on stabbing victims and the handedness of the stabbers and found that only ninety-two percent of right-handed stabbers used their right-hands. In stabbers who are left-handed, only eighty-six percent actually used their left hands."

"But most of the people still used the hand they would write with," Palmer pointed out.

"If fingerprint analysis were only eighty-six, or even ninety-two, percent accurate, do you think it would be used in court?" she asked. "That paper's been used on both sides of the aisle in criminal cases. Pathologists now can only say that stabbings are 'consistent' with the handedness of the suspect. Besides, I imagine everyone who was taught this technique was taught by a right-handed instructor, or a left-handed instructor who was taught by a right-handed instructor. Most people copy what they've been taught exactly, especially lefties, who find that they often have to compensate to fit a right-handed world. Nate's left-handed, but he uses the mouse on the computer with his right-hand, because that's what he's seen Maddie and me do. But back to the point. There's something that's been bothering me about this since the first case. That technique requires the assailant to be standing behind the victim, but everything about these crimes seems a lot more personal that that. Gibbs." She turned her attention back to the NCIS agent. "Is there any way to break someone's neck while facing them?"

"I would think so," he replied. He stepped up to her again, his face less than a foot from hers, and she found herself looking right into his blue eyes. This time, it was his right hand at the back of her head, and his left on her chin, so when her head turned, it was to the right.

"But that's the opposite direction as before," Palmer needlessly pointed out. Gibbs was slow about lowering his hands, and even slower about moving away. "So we either have someone who used a right-handed technique from the back, or a left-handed technique from the front."

"Right," Gracy replied once she had regained her bearings, feeling oddly flustered, which, for someone who has testified in court countless times, been shot at in war, and faced the prospect of raising two children alone, didn't happen often. She found herself unable to pay attention to the conversation around her, her mind replayed a quasi-leading line spoken more than a year before: _I think DC has much more to offer me_. That and the conversation with Ducky only a few hours before had her mind going in places she rarely let it go. She blinked to hear Jimmy Palmer speaking again.

"So that gets us nowhere."

"More information is always better than less, Mr. Palmer," Ducky rebuked him gently before turning back to Gracy. "Do you think your Dr. Lester would be able to tell if our ladies were killed from the front or the back?"

"I'll ask," Gracy said, shrugging slightly. She glanced down at her watch and made a face. "But I'm afraid that's going to have to wait until Monday. I've got a pair of bratty kids I have to get ready to take down to Norfolk in the morning. I am still on leave, after all."

"What's in Norfolk?"

"Swim meet," she said, rolling her eyes. "I remember them being a lot more fun than they really are. I guess that's the difference between being a competitor and being a parent." She shoved the last of the folders into her backpack before swinging it over her shoulder. She gave the three men a small wave. "I'll see you guys later. Have fun."


	5. Chapter 5

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 5**

* * *

As it turned out, there wasn't much for the team to do until Monday anyway. Despite his promise, CID Special Agent Wang seemed unwilling to share any information related to the case until he had seen the autopsy reports, which left Gibbs and his team searching background information on Staff Sergeant Nicholas Jasper, unsure of what they were looking for, except anything that could explain his connection with Captain Jessa Rodriguez. By the end of the day on Friday, they knew where Jasper had grown up and how he had done in school, but still had no explanation for what he was doing outside Rodriguez's Chevy Chase condo on Wednesday night. Exasperated, Gibbs sent them home and told them to enjoy the weekend. They figured it might be the last free one they had in awhile.

When he still hadn't heard back from Wang by morning, Gibbs decided that it was time to take matters into his own hands. "DiNozzo," he barked, lobbing a set of keys in the direction of his senior field agent. "Gas the Charger. We're going on a field trip."

"I forgot to get my permission slip signed, Boss," DiNozzo replied with a grin, glad to be given something to do. Gibbs looked less than amused, and DiNozzo quickly slipped away, a chuckling Ziva in tow, McGee bringing up the rear. Gibbs checked with Ducky one last time—still no updates—before heading down the garage to join them.

Despite the very similar missions of the two agencies, NCIS and CID didn't work together often, and Gibbs found himself wondering when the last time had been that he entered the gates at Ft. Belvoir. He wondered if it really could have been two and a half years before, when he and Major Gracy—then CID Special Agent Gracy—had come to arrest her late husband's commanding officer for treason and conspiracy to commit murder. He wondered briefly what had become of Lars Hauser. Last he had heard, the former colonel was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in Ft. Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. It had only been a deal made with the US Attorney that prevented him from being sent to Guantanamo Bay with his co-conspirators.

He pushed those thoughts aside as he led his team of agents into CID headquarters and up to where he assumed Special Agent Wang's office was. A friendly yet bewildered agent had informed them that Wang and his team were currently meeting in a conference room, where she led them.

"You must be NCIS," the man Gibbs assumed to be Special Agent Wang—he was the only one of Asian descent in the room—said after stunned silence had followed the team's entry into the conference room.

"That's right," Gibbs said calmly. "If I had known there would be a meeting, we would have gotten here sooner." The CID agent had no reply to that as he motioned his agent to proceed with his presentation.

"To, uh, bring our NCIS colleagues up to speed, I was just going over the forensics report from Chris—uh, that's Christopher James, our forensic scientist. The bullet that killed Staff Sergeant Jasper is a standard 9mm bullet, nothing remarkable about make or model. Rifling and ammo is consistent with the gun fired in the previous three attacks. As in the previous cases, Dr. Rodriguez's Common Access Card was found discarded on top of her body." A crime scene photo of the crumpled body of a petite dark-haired woman was on the screen, her neck turned to an impossible angle. Resting face-down over her abdomen was the white rectangle of her military ID card. "Uh—"

"Did you say _Dr._ Rodriguez?" Gibbs interrupted. The agent blinked once in surprise before answering.

"Uh, yes, uh, sir. Captain Rodriguez is a veterinarian for the working dogs at Quantico_. _Uh, there doesn't appear to be any care given to the placement of the ID card over the body, which is consistent with the previous attacks. It appears that it was removed from Dr. Rodriguez's ID wallet on her lanyard and tossed onto her body. There were two sets of fingerprints on the card, one of which is Rodriguez and one is that of Matthew Gonzalez. He's with the security company that guards the gate on post."

"Is he a suspect?" Ziva asked.

"He's clean," another agent informed her. "Just moved to the DC area five months ago with his wife and kids. He was at Pizza Hut with them to celebrate his daughter's perfect report card or some such thing until 2045 on Wednesday and then went home with them. Everyone says he was there until he left for the base Thursday morning." Ziva nodded, and the previous agent continued.

"There were also some smudges, including those consistent with synthetic gloves, likely nitrile—"

"Anyone check into people who would have nitrile gloves?" Gibbs interrupted. The agent shook his head.

"Nitrile gloves are just as common, if not more so, than latex these days," he informed the NCIS agent. "Anyone can get them. Uh, we haven't gotten her clothes back from NCIS yet, so, uh—"

"I'll make sure you get Abby's report," Gibbs said, glancing over at Wang. He left _when you start cooperating_ out. He was sure it was assumed.

"Uh, thanks. So, uh, onto Jasper." A new picture appeared on the screen, this time of man with light hair buzzed short and a bullet hole through his forehead. He was wearing a dark blue tee-shirt with what appeared to be a unit logo where the left front pocket would be on a dress shirt. The familiar white rectangle of his ID was seen next to that logo on his chest. "Unlike the previous crimes, Jasper's ID is prominently displayed. In all the other attacks, the men had no identification on them, but as you can see here, Jasper's CAC is face-up and properly oriented."

"He wanted whoever found the bodies to know who he was," DiNozzo chimed in.

"Uh, that's what we assumed as well, Agent, uh—"

"DiNozzo."

"Right. We, uh, couldn't figure out why, though."

"Were the previous male victims in the military?" Ziva asked thoughtfully. "Maybe the killer has a fixation with military ID cards, and that is why he has always left the female victims' ID cards visible."

"But they weren't displayed like Jasper's," DiNozzo pointed out.

"That is true."

"To answer Agent, uh—"

"David," Ziva filled in. "Officer Ziva David, Mossad liaison." There was a brief period of silence in the room, interrupted by DiNozzo's snicker, which was cut off by Ziva's elbow jabbing into his abdomen.

"Uh, to answer Officer David's question, no, the previous male victims were not associated with the armed forces, either in the past or when they were killed. That was another difference between this crime and others. Uh, like Rodriguez, the only prints on Jasper's card are his own and two contracted guards—"

"And they both have alibis, before you ask," Wang informed the NCIS agents.

"Right. And, uh, some smudges and some patterns consistent with synthetic gloves. As far as the footprints..." Gibbs let his mind wander as the CID agent explained, in painstaking detail, he various prints he had found on the path and the weather conditions in the few days leading up to Wednesday's murders and the numbers of joggers and walkers that use that trail. He found himself focusing on the photo of Jasper, still displayed on the large screen.

"That unit patch," he finally said, interrupting whatever the young agent was saying about the difference between running shoes and walking shoes. "That's not from around here." As one, all heads turned toward the screen, eyes narrowed into squints. The agent controlling the display enhanced the image and oriented it properly to help them out.

"We hadn't gotten to that," Wang finally said. "This is the only picture where that's visible, and you guys have his actual shirt."

Gibbs ignored the unspoken jab. "That's Fleet Hospital 3 in Iraq," he said.

"Wow, Boss, you knew that off the top of your head?" DiNozzo asked in wonder. Gibbs didn't tell him that he recognized it because he had seen the Navy hospital's patch pinned to a bulletin board in a morgue office in Ibn Sina more than a year before. A teasing comment about liking Marines passed through his mind.

"Jasper was deployed to Iraq two years ago, Boss," McGee chimed in. "He was with an engineering brigade. I don't know why he would have been at the hospital. There's no record of any injury in his file."

"The shirt's from a race," one of the CID agents chimed in. "See? Under the logo it says 'Fleet Hospital 3 Midnight Half-Marathon'. Your staff sergeant must have been a runner. Captain Rodriguez used to run professionally for Mizuno, the shoe company, when she was in vet school. She was in Iraq at the same time, could have been at that race."

"Could be where they met," McGee said, vocalizing what they were all thinking.

Wang shook his head slightly, not to disagree with the statement, but in an expression of frustration. "That's all well and good," he said, "but it does nothing to explain why these two—or the previous six—are dead."

"What do the couples have in common?" one of the CID agents asked. "Other than the women all being Army officers."

"Well, that's your common link," Gibbs pointed out. "Maybe this has nothing to do with the men at all, and they were simply dating the wrong women. Wouldn't be the first time that happened."

"What're you thinking, Boss? Someone that has something against women officers?" DiNozzo asked with a frown. Gibbs shrugged a shoulder.

"Could be. Or it could be these officers specifically." He frowned as he studied the pictures of the women, taped on a white board against the opposite wall. "Two captains, a first lieutenant, and a second lieutenant."

"Those are all fairly junior ranks," Ziva pointed out. One of the CID agents shook her head.

"I don't know if that's relevant," she said. "There are more captains than any other officer rank in the Army, because unless there's an unusual separation—medical discharge, death, etc—you're going to reach captain before your contract is up, but not everyone will reach major. And women are more likely than men to leave as soon as their first contract expires."

"What about their jobs?" DiNozzo asked. Again, the agent shook her head.

"A nurse, a quartermaster, an instructor, and a vet. Nothing. Both Macintosh and Rodriguez went through Officer Basic Course at Ft. Sam, but it was two different courses—nursing corps and combined medical/dental/veterinary corps—and did so years apart. Other than that, none of them have had any of the same assignments or been posted to the same base. Literally the only thing they have in common is that they're officers in the Army."

"And female," Gibbs reminded her. "That seems to be specific."

"They're all white," McGee chimed in. "Well, Rodriguez is a Hispanic name, but she's fairly light-skinned."

"Again, not relevant." This time it was Wang who spoke. "Eighty-five percent of Army officers are white. Statistically speaking, if you randomly pick four Army officers, you have higher odds of ending up with four white Army officers than getting any minorities. We've already been over this, before you guys arrived. Listen, I don't mean to sound territorial about this—"

"Then don't," Gibbs interrupted.

"—But we agreed to share our notes regarding Staff Sergeant Jasper's murder. The rest of this is still a CID investigation," he continued, ignoring the NCIS agent.

"Sergeant Jasper and Captain Rodriguez were killed by the same person," Gibbs pointed out, "and until someone proves otherwise, that person killed the other six as well. I don't see how we can share Jasper's notes without getting into the other cases. Like it or not, Agent Wang, you're stuck with us for awhile."


	6. Chapter 6

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 6**

* * *

Major Sonja Gracy had in-processed to many military bases and hospitals over the years—including the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, several times—and knew that it would be an all-day ordeal of safety briefings, tours (which she hardly needed, considering she had spent the majority of her career within those walls), checks to make sure her Common Access Card was working properly, and more forms that required more signatures than was required to form small countries. With this in mind, she left her kids in the care of Mariana, the new nanny (this time from the Dominican Republic instead of her usual German-speaking Europeans; she felt it was time for the kids to learn Spanish) and headed in early to take care of business before being bored to tears by in-processing.

"I come bearing gifts," she announced, her already large grin widening by the sight of her friend and colleague jumping in surprise.

"Good God, if it isn't the famous Major Sonja Gracy, MD," Dr. Van Lester joked as he recovered his wits. "I saw your name go up on your new office and wondered when you'd be showing your face around here."

"I think you're confusing 'famous' for 'infamous', Van," Gracy said with a smile. "I'm sure I'll be showing my face to a lot of people who still remember me for being the pathologist who cut up her husband, then dropped out of medicine to arrest his killer, then came back to get sent to Hawaii."

"Well, no one can say your career has been boring."

She laughed. "That's what I always liked about you, Van. You always look on the bright side. A bit ironic for one in our line of work."

"Maybe. Or maybe it's the only way to stay sane." She glanced down at what he had been working on when she walked in and found herself staring at a child's skull. Maybe he had a point. "Please, have a seat. Stay and chat for awhile before you return to the side of the building dealing with people who still have flesh."

"Well, I'm in-processing today, so I doubt I'll even see that office you claim bears my name." She placed the large plastic cooler she had been carrying on the floor before picking up an intact pelvis bone from the least-cluttered of Lester's two chairs. "Male," she guessed, not even looking at it. The forensic anthropologist only had to glance at it for a second before sighing in defeat.

"I expected better of you, Sonja," he chided. She shrugged.

"Usually when we see them, there are other parts attached to the pelvis that make it pretty clear which gender it is." The two had worked together several times in the past, starting when she was a resident and he was in his last year of graduate school before earning his Ph.D. As such, she had gotten his mini-lecture on using the skull and pelvis to identify gender several times, and if she had studied it hard enough, she could have figured it out. However, she wasn't here for an anthropology quiz.

"You said something about gifts," Lester prompted. "If it's not Kona coffee, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Honestly, I don't see how anyone can be stationed in Hawaii and request to return to DC."

"I got tired of swimming in my outdoor pool in January and being surrounded by beautiful scuba diving sites," she joked. "I think all that sunshine makes people too happy. Not enough people killing each other to make the life of a forensic pathologist all that interesting. I used to meet with the trauma surgeons every so often so we could complain about how over-qualified we were to work at Tripler." She could tell by the blank expression on his face that he didn't get the joke, so she explained, "Tripler's not a trauma center. But anyway." She dug into her backpack before finding what she was looking for and produced a one-pound bag of Kona coffee.

"Vanilla hazelnut flavored Kona coffee," Lester said in amazement, holding the bag as if it were the holy grail. "I would kiss you right now, but I don't think my wife would appreciate that."

"Give her some of that coffee and I think she would understand."

"Eh, she gave up coffee for Lent."

"Van, Lent ended in April."

"Well, that explains the evil glares I've been getting when I hide the coffee." The two grinned at the silliness. "Thanks, Sonja. Why do I get the feeling this is softening me up for something?"

"Actually, I would have thought this would be the more appreciated of the gifts," she remarked as she held up that plastic cooler. He reached for it like a kid with a Christmas present, but she didn't relinquish it just yet. "First, do you know where the anthropology reports from 2003 would be?"

"Depends. Who was the FA?"

She shrugged. "I tried to remember, and couldn't come up with a name. That might have been the time when we didn't have someone on staff for about seven months."

"Well, I'll take a look around and see what I can find. Can I have my present now?" She finally released the box, which he opened eagerly.

"Wow," he said, his eyebrows raised appreciatively. "How'd you get _that_ past the guards?"

"I told them they didn't want to see it. After they ran it through the x-ray, I think they agreed." She could have taken the disarticulated head and neck through the loading docks, where the guards were accustomed to seeing human bodies in various states of decay and disrepair, but it was too far of a walk from the visitor's parking space she had to use until she got a proper parking pass.

"Pretty girl," Lester commented, still staring down at the box.

"Usually you don't say that until after their flesh has been removed."

"True," he agreed. "I heard CID had another victim of...what was the name they gave the killer?"

She shrugged; before her brief stint as a CID special agent, a good portion of which was spent at NCIS, she hadn't paid much attention to the investigative side of the crime, just the dead body. "I think the last special agent in charge called him the Distorted Bastard, but I doubt that was his official moniker. She had a rather dry and fairly crude sense of humor off the record. I wonder what happened to her. There's a new SAC now."

"Who was the old one?" Lester asked as he frowned, trying to remember. Unlike Gracy, he liked to play an active role in investigations, often to the point of the investigators telling him to back off. She didn't know if it was actual interest, or an impression that that was what forensic anthropologists were supposed to do because that's what they did in fiction. He also liked to comment that it was time for him to start writing mystery novels, because seemed to be the latest 'in' thing for forensic anthropologists to do, citing Bill Bass and Kathy Reichs as examples. She joked in return that she didn't think he had a literary bone in his body. He would reply that, as one who studied bones for a living, he knew for a fact that there was no such thing as a literary bone.

She shrugged. "I don't remember. I don't think I met her after the first autopsy, and only a few times after the second to ask questions about something I found. She was an officer, not a civilian, I remember that. I think maybe a lieutenant colonel?"

"Ah," he said, remember. "Mann."

"No, woman."

"No," he said with a laugh. "Lt. Colonel Mann. Blond hair, shorter than you?"

"Van, most women are shorter than me. A lot of men, too." With her desert tan combat boots on, she easily passed six feet.

"Well, if she's who I'm thinking of, she went out not too long after you did."

She grimaced slightly, remembering the circumstances that surrounded her discharge from the Army, prior to her return a year later. "Hopefully for better reasons than me."

"Yeah. She was more successful at leaving, too. Last I heard, she's still retired from the Army and living in Hawaii."

"Then she's probably not in the investigative business anymore. Like I said, not enough death in Hawaii."

He smiled slightly and closed the lid of the cooler again. "I'll get to this as soon as I'm done with this," he said, holding up the skull he had been working on when she walked in. "It'll be at least a day, maybe longer since she's so fresh, to get the soft stuff off the bones, though." She nodded; she had expected that. "X-rays and records?"

"Sent via classified email this morning."

He grinned. "Ah, efficiency. I've missed you around here."

She snorted. "You work in a facility that's mostly run and staffed by military personnel. Don't try to butter me up by trying to convince me that I'm the only efficient worker around here."

"You got me," he admitted with a smile before abruptly changing the subject. "So how are Maddie and Nate? They do still like to be called Maddie and Nate, right?"

She rolled her eyes slightly. "Maddie has informed me that she hates the name Madeline and will never forgive me for giving it to her. I try to remind her that her father wanted to call her Noelle, but that doesn't seem to make a difference. They're good, both of them. They just had a swim meet this past weekend in Norfolk, their first with their new team. Maddie was upset that she didn't win _all_ of her races. She's got a competitive streak a mile wide."

"Not at all like her mother," Lester said sarcastically.

"No, not at all," she replied, equally dry. "Nate, on the other hand, missed one of his events because he was off playing with some new friends that he had just met. To Maddie, getting out there and winning is the end-all and be-all of the sport, but it's more of a social activity for Nate. Guess I'll have to find another way to finance his college education than a swimming scholarship."

"If his parents are any indication, he certainly won't be a dullard in the classroom. Besides, he's starting, what, first grade? I don't think you need to worry about college just yet."

"Second, actually," she corrected.

"My goodness, they're getting old."

"Your oldest is only a year behind him." He and his wife had three kids, ranging from age two to six. Unlike the Gracy children, who both took after their parents in terms of athleticism and were involved in every sport they could think of—swimming, soccer, and basketball had been the big ones in Hawaii, as Sonja declared them too young to be surfing—the Lester kids—at least six-year-old Briony Lester, the only one old enough to participate anyway—seemed uninterested in sports, probably because their parents had been uninterested in sports.

"I'm glad they're doing well," he said before his smile fell, replaced by a thoughtful frown. "Time to be honest, Sonja. How have you been? Really."

She squirmed slightly under that intense gaze. "Better," she finally said. "A lot of time has gone by, Van."

"You say that, but I bet you aren't even dating yet."

"You're the second person to comment on my dating life since this case began." She tried to smile, but he was still scrutinizing her. "Seriously, Van, I'm okay."

"I was a bit surprised when you told me you're coming back to DC. There are a lot of memories here."

"Well, yeah," she admitted, consciously pushing aside the sudden image of a gun pressed to the side of a dark-haired five-year-old's head. "But mostly good. This is where I bought my first home, drank too much in med school, had my first job that paid living wages. Both of my kids were born over at Navy. I watched the fireworks over the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. I started my adult life in this city, Van. I figured it would be as good place as any to start it over, too."


	7. Chapter 7

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 7**

_A/N: Just a pre-emptive note about Army uniforms before I get reviews saying "Aren't Army service uniforms green?" or something to that effect: yes, the current US Army service uniform is green, but they are combining them with the dress blue uniform, so that'll be the new class A service uniform. Just means it's something else I have to spend money on..._

* * *

Major Sonja Gracy slowed her car to a stop at the red light before she glanced into the rearview mirror into the backseat. She smiled slightly, not at all surprised by what she saw. Maddie, as always, had her head down, her attention focused on the open book on her lap. Nate, who couldn't read in the car because he got carsick, had a bored and slightly mischievous expression on his face as he glanced over at his sister before looking down at his lap. Gracy didn't know what he held there, but figured he was up to no good. "Don't even think about it, Nathanael," she warned. He jumped slightly, a guilty expression on his face, and she had to smirk as she knew he was wondering how she knew what he was planning on doing. She'd go on letting him think that his mother had mind-reading powers for a couple more years yet.

Traffic had just started moving again when she heard the familiar beeping sound of her phone, currently routed through the car's built-in Bluetooth system, a feature she deemed necessary when shopping for a car more than two years before. Her beloved BMW SUV, which she had driven since graduating from medical school, hadn't made the move to Hawaii, where fuel-efficiency was the most desirable feature in a vehicle. "Gracy," she said after pressing a button on her steering wheel.

"_It's Gibbs_," the disembodied voice replied through the car's speakers. In the backseat, Maddie's head snapped up with sudden interest. Although she had only spent a brief period of time in his presence, Maddie had taken an instant liking to the NCIS special agent for reasons that Sonja could never quite explain. Maybe it was because of his role in capturing her father's killer—her own personal _Butzemann_—and thus ending the nightmare that the child had been in for over a year. Or maybe she had sensed a loss in him that mirrored her own: a daughter without a father, a father without a daughter.

"Hi, Agent Gibbs!" she said brightly. "It's Maddie."

There was a brief pause, followed by a subtle change in his usual no-nonsense manner. "_Hello, Maddie. How are you?_"

"Good," she replied. Getting used to talking on the phone without a phone being present had taken Sonja awhile to get used to, but it never seemed to bother her children. The benefits of growing up with the technology, she figured. "Mom just picked us up from swim practice. I got to swim with the eleven and twelve years today. I'm the _only_ nine-year-old who got to swim with them." Her voice was full of pride at that fact. _Ah, to be nine and to have that be your only concern_, Sonja mused.

"Maddie, I don't think Agent Gibbs called to ask you about swim practice," she said patiently. "Something I can do for you, Gibbs?"

"_We were wondering if you'd be able to come in._" She stifled a sigh at the request, which she had half-suspected since answering the phone, and involuntarily glanced at her watch. Time with her children, limited as it already was, was something she didn't like wasting.

"We're on our way over to Henderson Hall to stop by the MCX for some back to school shopping and pick up a few things for the house," she told him. She didn't think there was an Exchange in the world to rival the Navy Exchange at Pearl Harbor, but the Marine Corps Exchange just outside Arlington National Cemetery was by far the best around. She didn't mention the planned stop by the cemetery before heading home. Some things went without saying.

"_We'll try not to take too much of your time_," he replied. This time, she did sigh; not only was the Navy Yard completely out of their way on the other side of the District, but she had spent enough time around criminal investigations to know that 'not taking too much time' invariably meant she'd lose a precious few hours. And with it being Monday afternoon and school starting on Wednesday, those hours were quickly dwindling.

"Gibbs, I've got the kids in the car, and—"

"_Bring them in. It won't be a problem."_

"Please, Mom?" Maddie asked, giving her mother a wide-eyed pleading look.

"The last time Nate was at NCIS, he was running around completely uncontrolled," Gracy reminded the NCIS agent.

"I was not!" the almost-seven-year-old protested indignantly.

"Yes, you were," Maddie patiently contradicted.

"Was not!"

"Were too!"

"_Ruhe!_" Gracy barked at both of them, commanding them to be quiet in German. They both stopped talking. She sighed again as she flipped on her turn signal to change lanes. "Fine, Gibbs, we're coming in, but it better just be a short visit. And if anyone complains about not being able to get any work done, don't say I didn't warn you."

---

Almost as soon as the elevator doors opened, two children came pouring out, followed by a tall woman wearing a blue uniform and unamused expression.

Although it had been more than two and a half years since she had been in the building, Maddie Gracy confidently made her way toward the grouping of desks closest to the stairs leading to the lofted area above. "Hi, Agent DiNozzo," she said with the polite air of a child who had been taught the importance of respecting adults.

"Hello, Miss Gracy," he replied just as formally, which made her grin. "You're a lot taller than you were last time I saw you." She was also more tanned and had more freckles, but the long black hair and surprisingly blue eyes were the same.

"I was only seven then," she said with a serious nod. "Now I'm nine and a half. And I'm starting the fourth grade on Wednesday."

"Fourth grade, huh?" he said, putting on a falsely thoughtful expression. "That's when you learn about calculus and world politics and start learning French, isn't it?"

"I don't know what calculus is," she replied. "And I don't know French. But Mariana, our new nanny, she's from the Dominican Republic, so she's going to be teaching us Spanish. At least, that's what Mom says she supposed to do, but Mom says she's a bit of a flake."

"French is easy to learn," Ziva declared as she approached from the lounge. She had skipped lunch and finally gotten hungry enough to justify a trip to the vending machine. "Although it is quite different from German."

"I also learned Arabic," the girl declared proudly to the Mossad officer. "_Jadda_ was living with us while Mom was deployed, so that's what we spoke with her." She rattled off a long sentence in Arabic, ending it with a grin on her face. As the Jordanian dialect Maddie had spoken was similar to the Palestinian Arabic Ziva grew up with, she found it easy for them to converse.

"You let your kids learn a language you don't speak while you were gone?" DiNozzo asked Major Gracy, amused. "And what's with the uniform? You just get out a meeting at the Pentagon or something?"

She did have to admit that the dark blue service uniform she was wearing was quite the change from the civilian clothes the NCIS agents had mostly seen her in during the three months she worked with them, with the gold leaves of her rank against the maroon shoulder tabs of the medical corps, the neat rows of ribbons and shiny pins, the thin gold and maroon stripes near her wrists. Maybe because the uniform change had been so recent, but it still felt a lot more formal to her than the old green service uniforms that just went out of issue. It was pretty hot, too, especially for an August afternoon. "Actually, I learned quite a lot of Arabic while I was in Iraq," she commented, "although Iraqi Arabic is a bit different from the Jordanian variety. And as far as the uniform, we _were_ on our way over to Arlington." Although the uniform was, by no means, a requirement at the National Cemetery—especially considering the numbers of tourists in tank-tops and shorts she would see—she always did it out of a sign of respect. "Where's Gibbs, anyway? He asked us to come by, then doesn't even make an appearance?"

"I'm right behind you, Gracy." She spun quickly at the voice, finding herself face-to-face—she had a bit more height in her black pumps than her combat boots—with NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. "I see you finally got your Combat Medical Badge."

She glanced down at the shiny silver pin attached to her chest and smiled slightly. "That's right," she said with a nod. "Finally got to replace my Expert Field Medical Badge. Our convoy was under attack one night. I really confused some Iraqi insurgent—I don't think he was expecting the soldier who shot him to start rendering first aid. So, what do you need me for?"

He nodded slightly, but she didn't know if that was at the story or to acknowledge the question. "You recognize this logo?" He handed over a photo, an enlarged image of the hospital patch that had been on Staff Sergeant Jasper's shirt.

"Of course. That's FH-3. It was on my route. I was usually there every other Tuesday. Why?"

"That was on Sergeant Jasper's shirt. He was deployed from September 2009 to October 2010."

"You think I might have known him?" she asked with a frown. He shook his head.

"Doubt it. He was an engineering sergeant. The shirt's from a race. The—"

"Midnight half-marathon?" she guessed, a small smile on her lips. "That was the most popular sporting event around. More of a social activity, really—people signed up so they could meet up with friends stationed at other bases. I ran it with a couple of other doctors from Ibn Sina. If you're asking if I saw him there, the answer is maybe, but there's no way to be sure. There were hundreds of runners from all services and branches."

"Actually, I was wondering if you remembered Captain Rodriguez. We think she might have been there, too."

She frowned, trying to remember, before giving an apologetic shrug. "Sorry, Gibbs, I couldn't tell you. Maybe if I had known she was an Army captain, she would have made more of an impression, but it was one of those 'we are all equal' type of events. You left your rank at home." She thought for a moment before remembering something. "All of the finishers got an email with the results—everyone's finishing time and place overall and by age and gender group. I think I saved mine. I can forward it to you so you can see if Rodriguez really was there. And if she finished with roughly the same time as Jasper, maybe they ran together for awhile. Could be where they met." She frowned slightly. "Is that all?"

"Actually, Abby found something on Jasper's clothing that you might want to take a look at."

As she followed him toward the elevator, she glanced back at her children. "Be good for Agents DiNozzo and McGee and Officer David," she ordered. She heard two obedient "Yes, Mom"s in reply.

"Come on, I'll show you something," she heard DiNozzo say as the elevator doors closed. She turned to Gibbs.

"Please tell me he's not to be teaching them how to make farting noises with their armpits or something."

Gibbs smiled at the thought before saying, "Nah. He's probably just going to teach them how to steal from the vending machine."

She thought about that for a moment before she shrugged. "Well, at least it's a useful skill."


	8. Chapter 8

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 8**

* * *

There had been very few changes made to the NCIS forensics lab in the last two years; at least, very few changes that Gracy could identify. She was sure that Abby Sciuto would point out a new poster or a different way of organizing the flasks and bottles of varying shapes, but she wisely didn't ask as she followed Agent Gibbs into the space. "What've you got for me, Abs?" Gibbs asked as they walked in.

"Geez, Gibbs, you've been gone for like, three seconds. I may be good, but I'm not that good." The Goth forensic scientist glanced up to see Gracy standing there as well. If she even noticed the Army major's uniform, she gave no reaction. Until she addressed her, that is. "Major," she greeted with a nod.

"Abby," Gracy replied in the same tone of voice.

"So, this is the shirt Staff Sergeant Jasper was wearing when he died," Abby began without any further pleasantries, pointing at the tee-shirt Gracy remembered cutting from the sergeant's body prior to Ducky beginning the autopsy. "The one from that midnight half-marathon thing." She hadn't needed to say that; Gracy recognized the design on the back, as she had one of her own. The four service logos—Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force—lined the top, and underneath was a comical, not-to-scale depiction of a man in an unidentifiable camouflage uniform with a full pack and Kevlar helmet running on a path that wound around a building that was supposed to represent the hospital. "The GSR is all over the front of the shirt, so he was facing the shooter when he died. But you knew that already, since you saw the bullet hole."

"Well, now we have forensic proof that he was wearing his shirt correctly when he died, instead of having the back to the front and vise versa," Gracy commented, fighting to keep a straight face. As a forensic science major prior to going to medical school, she remembered the basic tenant of not believing anything until you have proof that it was so. She remembered going out of her way to describe things that should have gone without saying, just to demonstrate to her professors that she wasn't assuming anything.

"Assuming that his head was on properly, of course," Abby replied with a nod.

"It was. I was there for the autopsy."

"That's good. Although it would have been really cool if it weren't. I bet I could get a publication for that. Speaking of which, Ducky showed me the article you wrote while you were in Hawaii about the effects of transdermal—"

"Abby, we don't have all day."

"Sorry, Gibbs. We'll talk later," she said to Gracy. "Now, I found something else when I was testing for the GSR. Other than the GSR, of course, which I expected to find. And did. But I also found these." She proudly pointed to a spot on the shirt that once covered Jasper's left torso and abdomen. Both Gracy and Gibbs leaned forward.

"Dirt?" Gracy finally asked.

"Yes! But the way that it's centered into these areas tells me that he didn't get this dirt on him when he fell after he was shot. I'm pretty sure it came from being kicked."

"Someone kicked him when he was down."

"That does seem rather cliché, doesn't it?" Abby agreed. "Unfortunately, whoever it was, probably the guy who killed him, kicked him with the toe of his shoe, so there's no prints. But I did take samples of the dirt and look at it under the microscope, over here." She pointed at the piece of equipment. "And I put it up on the plasma for Gibbs, since I know he can never see anything under the microscope."

Gracy grinned at the comment before lowering her face to the eyepiece of the microscope, expertly adjusting it with the ease of someone who used such a piece of equipment on a daily basis. She frowned slightly as black flecks came into view, using the fine focus to move the image up and down to try to figure out how thick they were. It was very thin, practically just a film. "Now, I put some of the dirt with these black things into the Mass Spec, but we don't have an answer just yet. Major Mass Spec is a very hard worker, but sometimes he takes a little of time to get the right answer."

The pathologist straightened from the microscope, a frown on her face as she tried to figure out something that she knew she was only seconds from grasping. The dust on the shirt, kicking with the toe of a shoe, the black flakes... At the same time, both Gibbs and Gracy came up with the answer. "Boot polish," they said in unison. Abby blinked in surprise.

"Whoa," she said. "That was really cool. Do it again. Ready... go!" She waited for them to speak again, but they just looked at her before turning to each other.

"I remember shining boots," Gracy mused. "Such a pain, and the polish really did flake off in these thin layers. When I was down in San Antonio for Officer Basic, we had to polish them every night, because the heat would melt the polish, and they'd be dull again by dinner." She had a sudden flash of memory: sitting cross-legged on the floor of Shaena's quarters, her polish tin open at her feet, a damp rag in her hand as they laughed about the boys in their platoon. "I was really glad when the Army switched to tan boots." She frowned. "When was the last time Marines wore boots that had to be shined?"

"The Marines introduced tan boots in 2002, which was three years before Sergeant Jasper enlisted. Everyone was in tan by 2004."

"So Jasper probably didn't shine his own boots and then kick his own shirt," Gracy said thoughtfully. "Would he have used polish for his wingtips?"

"I don't think he would have kicked himself in the side," Abby chimed in. "And he was wearing running shoes, not his wingtips."

"Assuming that he was kicked the night he died," Gracy argued. "I don't remember any bruising on his left flank, but sometimes perimortem bruising takes a day or so to develop. I'll have to take another look—or have Ducky take another look—at the body. But if he _was_ kicked that night, then we're looking for someone who was either wearing black polished shoes to commit double homicide, or someone with a pair of polished black boots, which would mean a Marine issued boots before 2002, or Army before 2005, Air Force before 2008, or Navy before..." She frowned. "When did the Navy change uniforms?"

"The blue camo was available in 2009 and not required until earlier this year," Gibbs informed her.

"Ugliest camouflage ever, by the way," Gracy mused. "And blue camouflage? What are they trying to blend into, the ocean? Don't you think if someone fell into the ocean that they'd want to be seen?" Gibbs had to smile slightly at the small rant; he also felt that the Navy's new blue camouflage uniforms were a little ridiculous. "The other thing to consider is that somebody bought a pair of combat boots from a surplus store, but why put the effort into shining them if you don't have to? And who wears combat boots in August if they don't have to? If we catch this guy, I hope his lawyer uses some sort of diminished capacity defense, because anyone who wears boots when not required is clearly insane."

"I wear boots when not required. And in August," Abby chimed in.

"I stand corrected."

"If this is someone with a vendetta against female Army officers, it could be someone who was in the Army," Gibbs commented. "Which would mean that it was someone who had joined the Army before 2005."

"We knew that already," Gracy pointed out. "The first murder happened in 2003. Unless he started this vendetta, and _then_ joined the Army, which would be a little strange, to say the least. The question would be, was boot polish found at any of the previous crime scenes, or is this new? And if it is new, does it mean we're dealing with a new killer, or is the old one getting sloppy?"

---

After leaving NCIS, Gracy immediately put aside all thoughts of polished combat boots and killers with vendettas against Army officers out of her head as she listened to the excited prattle coming from the backseat. Nate, who at two weeks shy of his seventh birthday was already showing signs of inheriting his father's talent with computers, couldn't stop talking about the computer game Agent McGee had shown him, which had a concept Gracy couldn't seem to grasp, although she was thinking it had something to do with espionage and shooting people, with an educational twist that reminded her of playing _Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego?._ As Nate was the son of two Army officers, one of which had been in Intelligence, she supposed it would have been a little hypocritical of her to complain about him playing such games. And from the way Maddie was going on about the stories Officer David had told and some of the things she had shown her, Gracy supposed her daughter had a new role model. She figured she would rather have Maddie idolize the Mossad officer—trained assassin or not—than any current Hollywood starlet.

They succeeded in finding most of what they would need for school at the Exchange—although the selection of clothes for pre-teens prompted Gracy to promise her daughter a trip to the mall in the near future—and also picked up some odds and ends for the house that either hadn't made the trip from Hawaii or were needed to accommodate the extra space in the larger house. A brief stroll through the Class Six—she knew the Exchange wine and liquor store wasn't called a Class Six on a Marine base, but Army habits died hard—produced a few bottles of wine for the housewarming party that Gracy had planned somewhere in the back of her mind.

Their next stop after shopping was Arlington National Cemetery, close enough to the Exchange that they had seen grave stones from their position in the parking garage. The previous good mood was replaced by a slightly somber one as the three prepared for their first visit in two and a half years. It had actually been Maddie's idea over breakfast a few days before, and since then, she had been obsessed with traditional protocol for visiting a grave. Should she bring flowers, she wanted to know, or was that too girly? Gracy told her that she could bring whatever she wanted to bring, or nothing at all. Any choice would be appropriate. She asked if she should speak to the grave marker as if speaking to her father, and again, her mother replied that she could do whatever she felt like doing. She explained that protocols weren't as important as paying the respects that one came to give.

Nate, who had been too young to remember his father when he had left for war, and fortunately slept through the nightmarish drama that followed his death, seemed almost lost in their planning for this visit to the cemetery. Gracy often wondered how losing his father when he was so young would affect him. Unlike his older sister, he didn't even have memories of his own to go along with the stories of the man he knew only from photographs. He seemed to have made up his mind about what his father would or wouldn't like, however, probably from a combination of the stories he had heard and his own impressions of what was and was not acceptable. He declared that he wouldn't bring flowers, but wanted to bring a flag. Gracy was surprised at the request before remembering that his first-grade class the year before had gone to a national cemetery in Hawaii on Memorial Day and placed flags on the graves of soldiers who had died in battle.

The sun was beginning to set as they crossed the cemetery toward the section where Major Scott Jaser Gracy was laid to rest, which, strangely enough, reminded Gracy that they hadn't had dinner yet; she would take the kids to a restaurant when they were done here. She saw in the distance a row of Marines lined up with their rifles to give a salute at a funeral, and flinched at the sound of the report. She wasn't normally jumpy around gunfire, but hearing it a cemetery brought back unpleasant memories. She wondered briefly what she had looked like that day. It had been a cold but clear day in December. She had worn her black trench coat over her dress blue uniform. Actually, the first trench coat she had removed from the closet had been Scott's; she hadn't realized until she had put it on that she had the wrong one...

She blinked at the memory, and found herself stopped in motion in front of a stone simply marked with the insignia of the Army's Intelligence Corps and the words "Scott Jaser Gracy, MAJ, US Army, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, SEP 7, 1974-NOV 17, 2007". The date he died was an estimation, her estimation, based on an autopsy she performed on a dining room table.

"Mom?" Maddie asked uncertainly, her blue eyes turned toward her mother. The blue eyes, like the black hair, were just like her father's. Gracy gave her daughter an encouraging smile.

"You can put the flowers down in front of the headstone, if you want," she told her. Maddie nodded and placed the flowers on the ground gently before speaking hesitantly.

"I hope you like carnations, Daddy," she said. "They had blue ones, and I remembered that you liked blue." Maddie had agonized over the flower selections earlier that day, asking Sonja multiple times about her father's flower preference. _Did he like these? What about these?_ Gracy had tried to remember what kind of boutonnière he had when they got married when she remembered belatedly that he had been wearing his dress uniform. _Good God, how did I forget that?_

Nate had confidently stuck the pole of the flag into the ground, then seemed uncertain of what to do next, looking up at her expectantly. With those dark blue eyes, his dark hair buzzed short for the summer, his already olive skin further tanned by the hours outdoors, he looked almost like a miniature version of his father. She smiled down at him and rubbed the top of his head before returning her attention to the gravestone.

She studied it for a minute, thinking about how little it revealed; just the bare facts of his life—his name, the day he was born, the day she thinks he died. Nowhere did it mention that he had been captured in the desert half a world away and tortured until he died. Nowhere did it say anything about the wife and children he left behind, or that his own father had died when the embassy he had been guarding was attacked when Scott was eight years old, or the fact that he could speak three languages like a native, or even that he loved to study history, but was terrible at remembering dates that events occurred.

She let her mind wander as she stood there, remembering the first time she had visited Arlington. She had been twenty-two, recently married, recently commissioned into the Army. It was August, actually—almost fourteen years to the day ago. She had completed her Officer Basic Course and was ready to start medical school, Scott was on leave from Intelligence training. He had suggested the trip, and she had eagerly agreed, armed with a list of famous graves she wanted to see. It had taken awhile, but they finally found the area she was looking for, the section were she could find the greats of Army medicine—Reed, Sabin, Gorgas. She remembered the way Scott laughed at her childish delight at seeing the final resting places of the men she had studied with wonder. She had vowed then that someday when they had children, she would bring them back there to tell them about yellow fever and polio and tell them how those men had helped make the world the place it is today. Someday, when Maddie and Nate were old enough, she would do that. And she would tell them about their father's laughter and how he teased her.

Staring at the gravestone, the one far away from those men she had admired, she still felt sad, still felt the loss of the man she planned on growing old with, but she no longer felt that paralyzing grief that had ruled her life for too long. With a sad smile, she touched her fingers to her lips, then to the gravestone. She had touched her fingers to Scott's lips much in the same way the last time she saw him alive, before he crossed through the security gate at the airport to catch the plane that would take him to Iraq. "I miss you," she finally murmured. Then she turned away and took her children's hands in hers, and headed back to the car to get something to eat.


	9. Chapter 9

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 9**

_A/N: Happy St. Patrick's Day! In recognition of wearing green, and in memory of the days when boots had to be polished, I've posted a picture of me ready to defend our country during my Officer Basic Course into my profile (limited time offer). Bonus points to anyone who can look at the picture and see why the idea of me defending anything in it is laughable :)_

* * *

Agent Tim McGee glanced over at Abby Sciuto as they handed over their ID cards at the gates to Ft. Belvoir, where Army CID was housed. She had been rambling on about something since they had first gotten into the car at NCIS, excited about getting to leave the lab to do some "real field work". He hardly thought that leaving one forensics lab to visit another counted as "field work", but he wasn't going to destroy her fun.

They were easily waved through the gate, and they soon found themselves at CID headquarters, where they went through another security screen—Abby's forensics kit and the evidence from Jasper and Rodriguez had gotten some attention—before they were given visitor's passes and a uniformed escort to the lab. Their escort, who never gave his name, nodded once to them when they arrived at the lab, and then disappeared without a trace. McGee wondered if he'd reappear when it was time for them to go.

The CID lab couldn't have been more different than its counterpart at NCIS. Sure, McGee could identify the mass spectrometer and the series of benchtop microscopes and centrifuges and superglue chambers for fingerprints, but where Abby's lab was dark and mysterious—just the way she liked it—everything here was white and chrome and gleamed like a gourmet kitchen.

"And when you're done with that, Sergeant, I'd like you to get started on the DNA evidence from the Johansen case." They heard a muffled "yes, sir" in response before a man came into view.

Like his lab, Christopher James was the antithesis of his NCIS counterpart. Where Abby had a larger than life presence—due, in part, to her appearance—her height, the large platform boots, the tattoos and short skirts—and in part due to her effervescent personality, James seemed to blend into the background, a slight young man with thick glasses and a white coat that matched his gleaming lab. "My assistant," he said as a way of explanation.

"I had one of those once," Abby mentioned. "He tried to frame one of our agents for murder."

"Bummer," James replied, as if there was nothing unusual about that statement. He held out a short hand. "Chris James."

"Abby Sciuto," Abby replied, taking it. With her boots on, she was easily seven inches taller than this guy. "Do you have a last name somewhere, Chris James?"

He chuckled the way one who had heard the joke a thousand times would. "My middle name is Hanson," he said. "I used to accuse my parents of getting confused on the birth certificate. You have the evidence from the Rodriguez/Jasper case?"

And just like that, it was down to business. Abby quickly explained what she had found, pulling vials and small plastic baggies out so James could see the findings she was referring to. "The polish came back Kiwi Parade Gloss," she said after a long story about how she had found the black flakes on Jasper's shirt.

"Anything significant about that?"

"Only if you consider the fact that it's, like, the second most popular type of black shoe polish, right after Kiwi paste polish," Abby said. Gibbs had said that Kiwi Parade Gloss was what he had used; Gracy had said the same thing.

"So no use tracking down purchases."

"Nope."

"Hmm. Did you try running it for DNA? Maybe he spit-shines his boots."

"I thought about that," Abby said. "But my boss says that 'spit-shine' is just an expression." Gibbs had explained to her in great detail how to shine boots to get a finish you could use as a mirror, which apparently was the goal. You filled the lid of the polish tin with water, then got a small amount of polish on the polish cloth, dampened it with the water from the lid, and rubbed a small section of the boot until it was as shiny as it got. Then you repeated that over and over until both boots were gleaming black. It sounded like far too much work for footwear that was meant to get dirty.

James had the evidence boxes lined up from the previous three cases, which all occurred before he began at CID, making Abby suddenly feel very old. McGee took a seat at one of the benches several meters away as they discussed how to go about searching the old evidence for the black flakes of polish—what was the refractive index of this particular boot polish? Would darkening the lab and using a polarized light source work? What about the ALS? Finally, they decided on the old-fashioned way: use them each one at a time and hope that something came up. The geeky little CID scientist was starting to get excited as he considered his prospects for publication. To the best of his knowledge, nobody had ever published how to detect shoe polish on clothing before. To fill the time, McGee idly ran a Google search to see if that were true, thinking as he did so that DiNozzo would be scoffing and calling him 'McGoogle'.

"McGee," Abby called to him impatiently. He glanced up to see her wearing the familiar yet still comical orange plastic goggles for using the ALS. "Are you going to grab a light source and help us, or do we have to do everything by ourselves?"

"Oh," he replied, standing up. "I didn't realize you wanted my help."

"Well, it would make this go faster. Do you know how many potential light sources we could search with?" He didn't, and made the mistake of saying so, which started both Abby and James on a long back-and-forth of the various lights and filters they could think of. It was a lot. He hoped they found something before they got through that list.

Each armed with a sample of that make of shoe polish dried onto an index card—Abby thought about everything, as usual—they began testing light sources, looking for one that would reflect the polish or cause it to glow or get any sort of reaction that would make finding it on clothing easy. After the first hour, McGee began to feel discouraged, but Abby and James seemed to get more into the experiment with each potential light source they rejected, going into great details about what that said about the polish's chemical composition and placing bets on which light source would be successful.

"Ah-ha!" Abby finally declared as she held up what looked like a flashlight. "We have a winner. The Parade Gloss glows like my next door neighbor's house at Christmas when you change the dielectric constant of the light source." She went into a very lengthy explanation that, even with his engineering background, McGee had a hard time following. Chris James appeared to be hanging onto every word.

"Wow," James said thoughtfully when she was done. "I wouldn't have guessed that."

"Pay up, Army boy," the NCIS forensic scientist ordered smugly. Chris James gave a good natured groan before pulling out his wallet and handing over a half-punched frequent-buyer card for a local smoothie place.

"_That's_ what you were betting?" McGee asked with a frown. "Abby, you don't even like smoothies."

"I know that," she replied, tucking the card in a pocket of her skirt McGee hadn't realized existed. "But I was betting my Caf-Pow card, so I really didn't want to lose. So, now that we have the right tool for the job, let's get to work."

To confirm that their light source would work on a real sample, not just an index card, they gently removed Staff Sergeant Jasper's shirt from the evidence bag and scanned the light over it. Sure enough, the three dusty footprints Abby had found the day before all gleamed as the light hit the microscopic specs of boot polish that remained. They also checked his jeans and found a similar, previously undetected spot on Jasper's left hip, indicating that he had been kicked four times, not just three, as they had thought. Not that it changed anything; he was still just as dead.

With a deliberate, almost reverent manner, they slowly removed the clothing from the previous cases from their evidence boxes and got to work, not missing a square centimeter of clothing from any of the six victims. Beginning to get into the task, McGee hadn't even noticed the passage of time.

"Well, that was Lt. Olafsen," James said as he set aside a pair of dark blue jeans, dejection heavy in his voice, "the last of our victims, and there was nothing on any of them."

"Cheer up, Man Without A Last Name," Abby said, her voice still chipper. "Good forensic science is about finding the right answer, not about finding the answer you were looking for. Every finding is important, even a negative. Now we know that none of the other victims was kicked by someone wearing polished shoes or boots."

"Do you think that's significant?"

She shrugged. "Ours is not to question why, Christopher, just how. If the autopsy reports and anthropology reports come back saying that this case isn't related, then that explains why we couldn't find polish on any of the other victims. But if they are related, then this could be a clue that our killer hadn't left before. And besides." She put on a wide grin, "we answered the age-old question of how to find flakes of shoe polish on clothing. Well, not age-old, maybe. More like hours-old. But the length of time people have been asking shouldn't lessen a great scientific discovery. Isn't that right, McGee?" The NCIS field agent, his mind growing numb from the hours of shining lights at objects in the name of this 'great scientific discovery', wasn't paying attention. "McGee!"

"Right, Abby." Often, it was easier to agree with her than explain that he hadn't been hanging on her every word.

---

McGee called Gibbs to tell him about their discovery—or rather, lack thereof—on the drive back from Ft. Belvoir, and Gibbs figured that the CID forensic scientist had been just as prompt at getting information to Agent Wang, because the CID agent called him as soon as he hung up the phone with McGee to ask if he would come over. Gibbs wasn't sure what he could possibly have to talk about that couldn't be discussed over the phone, but he wasn't doing anything anyway, and figured a change of scenery could do him some good.

Surprisingly, traffic was light on the drive into Virginia, and it wasn't long until Gibbs was passing through security at CID headquarters and on his way to see his counterpart. As before, he was directed toward the conference room before he could even ask which office was Wang's. He figured the agent and his team had taken up residence there for the duration of the case.

"You rang?" he asked sarcastically as he entered the space. Wang glanced up and waved him over to where he stood, scrawling information on a white board.

"I take it you've heard from your people about the boot polish," the CID agent began.

"You didn't ask me to risk DC traffic to ask me that."

Wang nodded as he continued writing. Gibbs could see that he was making notes of facts about the case. He had seen other agents do this, often at the FBI, but he never saw the point. It was easier to keep everything in his head.

The CID agent capped the marker and turned to Gibbs, who was still reading what Wang had written. His last entry, just added, was 'Boot polish: Army before 2005?' "How does that help you?" he finally asked.

Wang shrugged. "I don't know yet. At this point, I'm just trying to sort out my thoughts. Listen, Gibbs, I know you don't have that high of an opinion about me, but I'm not going to take that personally, since I've heard you don't have a high opinion of anyone. But I was given this case because of my experience. I may be new to CID, but before coming here, I was at the FBI for seven years, five of which were spent chasing pattern killers. So I don't need you to be telling me how to do my job."

"Wasn't planning on it."

"Right. Quite frankly, I'm annoyed that you're here, involved with this case. I'm annoyed that our killer had the bad manners to murder himself a Marine and get you here. But since you're here and showing no signs of leaving any time soon, I'm going to use you as I see fit. This is a CID investigation first and foremost, and I'm in charge. That means that I call the shots. I decide who does what, and I decide when we're going to bring in an expert."

"I wasn't aware we needed one."

"Well, I decided we did, and like I said, I call the shots. I gave the former special agent in charge a call for a consultation. Now, I expect you to play nice. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly. Are you done?"

"Do you have something to say?"

Gibbs studied the agent as he took a sip of his coffee. "Just this: you may have experience tracking your so-called 'pattern killers', but there's more to this case than some nut-job living out his murder fantasies over and over. This is a military crime. You're going to need someone who has experience with the military and knows what it means to serve. If you're going to be calling in any 'experts', I suggest you forget about the special agent who couldn't solve the case in the first place and start with a woman who has Army officer experience."

"Well, it just so happens, Jethro, that the 'special agent who couldn't solve the case in the first place' happens to be a woman with Army officer experience." Gibbs turned quickly at the sound of the voice he hadn't heard in years to find her standing in the doorway. She looked older than he remembered, but it could have been the fatigue from a full day of travel and six-hour time zone difference. The blond hair in a ponytail and confident stance were certainly the same as they were then.

"Special Agent Gibbs, I believe you've met Retired Lt. Colonel Hollis Mann. The previous special agent in charge."


	10. Chapter 10

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 10**

* * *

Despite the surprise of seeing Mann again after four years of no contact, Gibbs quickly got down to work. Confident that Wang had already filled the former CID agent in on the case, he cut to the chase. "I know you've already sent agents to do so, but I'd like my people to check out Captain Rodriguez's home. Seeing as she died just outside her building, I think our killer might have been watching her. We'd need to see the crime scene as well."

"You're about half an hour behind the eight ball, Gibbs," Wang told him. "After we heard back from Chris about the boot polish, I sent an agent back to her condo to check it out. Rodriguez was ROTC before the Army put her through veterinary school—in all, she's been in in one form or another for almost twelve years. The Army didn't introduce ACU's and tan boots until six years ago and didn't make them required until four years ago. We wanted to exclude the possibility that she still had a pair of black boots and polish in her home before declaring that the polish came from the killer. Your Agent DiNozzo requested that he and Officer David go along and take a look at the crime scene as well. I gave them my blessing."

Gibbs nodded. He wasn't surprised at DiNozzo's initiative—after all, Gibbs himself had trained him—but was a little annoyed that he hadn't called to give an update. Then he pulled out his phone and saw that he had one missed call from Ziva. So maybe they hadn't forgotten about their boss after all. He looked up and turned to Mann. "You want to come?"

She looked like she was going to refuse for a second—after all, she had probably just gotten off a twelve-hour flight that was likely spent reading through the case notes, and time-zone wise probably should have been sleeping—but she changed her mind and gave a crisp nod. "Has your driving improved at all, or should I borrow a car from CID and drive myself?" His only answer to that was to grin.

---

They were almost into Maryland when they spoke again. "I see you still think of traffic laws as guidelines," Mann said sarcastically as Gibbs accelerated past another car. When the NCIS agent didn't reply, she changed the subject. "So DiNozzo did something without prior approval from the boss? I find that hard to believe."

"It's been awhile since you've been around," he replied. She flushed slightly at the unspoken words underneath the statement. "DiNozzo's been showing a lot more independence lately. He's bucking for his own team."

"That I _really_ find it hard to believe." The Agent Tony DiNozzo she remembered seemed to practically worship the ground his boss walked on; she couldn't imagine him wanting to get away and be out on his own.

"Hell, it's about time," Gibbs scoffed. "He's been working for me for too damned long."

"Any idea where he wants to go?"

Gibbs shrugged. "Probably somewhere in the Middle East. Ziva's been talking about the possibility of going home."

Maybe it was her jet-lagged brain that failed to make the connection, but she couldn't see what the Mossad liaison wanting to return to Israel had to do with the senior field wanting a position in the Middle East. "What does that have to do with anything?"

He looked surprised at the question, then starting chuckling. "Hell, Holly, they've been sleeping together for the last two years. It's about time things started to get serious."

Wow. A lot had changed since she left DC. "They're sleeping together and you're okay with that?" she asked incredulously. "Whatever happened to the all-important rules?"

He shrugged. "I told them to keep it out of the office. Hasn't been a problem."

They arrived at the Chevy Chase condominium complex to find the NCIS evidence truck parked about a block away, close to the municipal park where Jasper and Rodriguez had been killed. They headed in that direction to see DiNozzo walk up the short path toward the truck, his NCIS cap backwards and a camera around his neck. "Hey, Boss," he called when he saw them approach, then did a double-take at who was with Gibbs. "Colonel?"

"Hello, DiNozzo," she said calmly. The senior field agent continued to look confused, his eyes going from his boss to the former Army officer and back again.

"Agent Wang called in a consult," Gibbs finally explained. "Holly was the senior agent in charge of the original three cases. You find anything?"

"No," DiNozzo replied, instantly back to business. "Apartment's clean, no signs of black boots or polish anywhere. She had a lot of pictures on her walls—a magazine ad for Mizuno shoes staring Rodriguez, some other pictures from races, a couple of her with Jasper, mostly shots of her and friends or family. Only other decoration was her undergraduate diploma, a BS in zoology from University of Washington. Ziva thinks her vet school diploma is at her office on base. She probably has a lot of deployment-related stuff there too, because there's not a lot here." He placed the camera in its carrying case in the back of the truck and grabbed a bottle of water. "Only other thing of note is that her condo faces the street—living room, bedroom, and bath all visible from the front. If our guy was watching her, he could see her come and go from the front door and watch her at home from the same spot. She has blinds on the window, but they're up now, might be like that all of the time. She has a dog, but CID already passed it along to one of her coworkers to take care of."

"And the crime scene?" Gibbs asked as the three headed back toward the park. DiNozzo shook his head again.

"Nothing there either, Boss. CID released the scene on Friday, so that's not a big surprise." They arrived back to find Ziva David leaning back on a park bench, her eyes closed. DiNozzo handed her the bottle of water, which she took a long swig from, swished it around her mouth, and spit it out. Gibbs raised his eyebrows.

"You pregnant, Officer David?" he asked, only half joking.

"I better not be," she said darkly as she took another sip of water. "I would have some strong words for the pharmaceutical company that produces my birth control if I were."

"You and me both," DiNozzo quipped. Neither Gibbs nor Mann missed his hand gently kneading the back of her neck before pulling away.

"You know, DiNozzo, the only hundred percent effective method of birth control is abstinence," Gibbs dead-panned.

Ziva spared DiNozzo from having to answer. "I do not think that is an option, Gibbs."

Tony grinned down at her before turned back to his boss. "She had some leftover Chinese for lunch," he said as an explanation.

"Then why aren't you sick, DiNozzo?"

Ziva snorted. "Tony does not eat leftovers," she said in a slightly mocking tone. Gibbs figured there was more to that story, but he didn't care to know.

"I hope you weren't puking all over my crime scene."

"The scene has been released, Gibbs," she reminded him. "And no, I did not. I used the trash can." She pointed at a metal bin on the other side of the small park. "I assume Tony already told you that we did not find anything of interest in the apartment?"

"Just some photos and a view of the street."

She nodded. "The apartment is on the eleventh floor," she said. "It would be difficult for someone to see into the rooms from ground level across the street. Even with binoculars, there is not much that can be seen at that angle except the ceiling. He would also be too obvious—a man with a pair of binoculars pointed into a condominium complex is sure to be noticed. He would likely be in a building with a view of the front of Rodriguez's building. There is one in the final stages of construction and not yet occupied that fits that description. I spoke to the building manager, who said that there is one security guard at night who guards the building. No surveillance is in place yet. The guard who was on duty on Wednesday night was a Joe Avila. I got his contact information from the building manager."

Gibbs nodded, but it was Mann who spoke. "Could be a suspect, or could just be a lousy security guard."

"Right," DiNozzo agreed. "Either way, we were going to round him up when we were done here and take him in for questioning."

"Do it," Gibbs ordered. "Give Agent Wang a call first and let him know what you're doing. I want him to think that we play nice." He paused, then added, "But bring him into NCIS."

DiNozzo grinned. "Sure thing, Boss."

"You have the keys to Rodriguez's place?"

DiNozzo nodded and handed them over. "Going up to take a look?"

Gibbs gave him a look. "No, DiNozzo, I just decided that I wanted to start a key collection."

"Right, Boss. Stupid question." DiNozzo smacked himself in the back of the head before Gibbs and Mann walked off. Mann waited until they were out of earshot before she turned back to Gibbs.

"Well, at least you still have him well-trained."

---

Just as DiNozzo and David reported, there was not much of interest in Captain Rodriguez's one-bedroom condo. There were quite a few pictures of Rodriguez running, and even more of her with friends—in and out of uniform—and family, including one with her parents. Gibbs figured her mother's blond hair and blue eyes provided a fairly good explanation for McGee's observation about how light-skinned Rodriguez was. As both NCIS agents had observed, the condo was on the front of the building, facing the street, and Gibbs could see the unfinished construction site less than a block away. He was sure that if he had a good pair of binoculars, he wouldn't have any problems seeing inside the building, or the other way around.

"Not much remarkable in ways of pins and ribbons," Mann observed, holding out Rodriguez's dark blue service jacket. It was similar the one Gibbs had seen on Gracy the day before, except her shoulder tabs had the silver 'railroad tracks' of a captain, her caduceus lapel pins bore a 'V' of the Veterinary Corps, and Rodriguez lacked any special pins above her rows of ribbons, where Gracy wore her Combat Medic Badge and Airborne pins. "She seems to have done just what was expected of her for her rank, and not much more."

"Probably biding her time until she could leave the Army," Gibbs remarked. "She owed five years of service from her time in ROTC, and if the Army pays for vets the way they pay for doctors, another four for vet school."

"Three," Mann contradicted with a shake of her head. "Medical students can get all four years of school paid for. Vet students have to pay for their first year, but they only owe three when they're done." At his raised eyebrows, she replied, "We had a case of a vet who wanted to leave the Army early shortly after I joined CID. It came up." She didn't ask how he knew about how much time physicians owed the Army.

He nodded. "So she owed eight years after completing vet school. Graduated four years ago, had another four to go. Probably would have made major in another two years."

"Yeah," Mann agreed before she replaced the uniform. "I don't see how that helps us any. None of the victims were especially remarkable officers, either good or bad. Rodriguez was the only one who had been deployed, but that was two years ago."

"They were all ROTC," Gibbs suggested. He took a quick picture of a photo on the wall, a young Rodriguez in the Army's old Battle Dress Uniform, a cadet rank on her patrol cap, three other grinning female cadets with her.

Mann shook her head. "So are about seventy-five percent of all Army officers," she pointed out. "West Point only produces about eight hundred new second lieutenants a year, of which only about a hundred are women. The rest come from ROTC, Officer Candidate School, or direct commissions in the medical, legal, or chaplain fields. And if someone had a grudge against women in ROTC, why wait to kill them until they're officers? Why not attack cadets? There must be something about these officers, something they said or did, or someone they met. I just wish we knew what that something was."


	11. Chapter 11

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 11**

* * *

Special Agent Tony DiNozzo surreptitiously watched his suspect from across the dirty and scarred table while he employed his favorite interrogation tactic: annoy them into talking by ignoring them, for as long as it took. His personal record was thirteen hours of sitting in that little room, passing the time by alternatively playing games on his phone and texting dirty messages to Ziva, just on the other side of the two-way mirror behind him. He still wondered if that suspect had noticed him blushing.

He knew Ziva hated this particular method of interrogation, especially when she was the one who had to sit and wait for something to happen in Observation, as she was now. They had actually had arguments about it. She preferred a much more direct approach, but DiNozzo had dryly reminded her that thumbscrews are frowned on in polite society. Still, he was wary of annoying her too much; he discovered that she had a much more effective mode of torture in her arsenal, one that didn't involve archiac devices but still had left him promising to do whatever she wanted. He wished he had more willpower, but the idea of being cut off from sex was just too much for him.

He had a slight break in the action of his Tetris game—which, for some reason, he actually preferred on his old phone, compared to this new one—while the new level came up, time which he used to glance at Joe Avila again. The stocky Hispanic man looked annoyed, but he had looked just as annoyed two hours ago when they brought him in. DiNozzo had studied the security guard's extensive tattoos in detail as Ziva drove them into NCIS, looking for any clue of past military service, but the dancing skeletons and half-naked women didn't seem to be hiding any anchors or Semper Fi's or unit logos. He didn't seem like the type to voluntarily join up with Uncle Sam, either.

"Come on, man, what're we waiting for?" Avila finally complained, his large biceps bulging momentarily as he fidgeted in his seat. "We've been here all day."

"It's been about two hours," DiNozzo replied calmly. "And I'm not in a hurry."

"Well, shit, man, I ain't getting paid to sit around some CSI interrogation room," he continued. "Do you even know what you're doing? Maybe I should be calling my law-yer." He enunciated the syllables of that last word, as if the idea of a cheap public defender in an equally cheap suit was supposed to scare DiNozzo.

The federal agent shrugged. "Go right ahead," he said nonchalantly. "Lawyers take a while to get here, and like I said, I'm not in a hurry."

"Shit," Avila muttered again before changing tactics. "Listen, man, I don't know anything about that couple getting killed."

DiNozzo raised his eyebrows, even while keeping his gaze fixed on the colored blocks on the screen of his phone. "Who said anything about a murder?"

"Well, shit, man, I just figured that's what this is about," Avila whined. "Why else would some federal agents from some agency I ain't ever heard of come knocking on my door wanting to 'talk'. Shit. I told you everything I know." He fell silent for a moment, then leaned forward as if his next words were some kind of secret. "Listen, man, my woman, she's waiting for me to come on over, and if I ain't there, I'm worried she'll find someone else to keep her busy, you know what I'm saying?" DiNozzo was tempted to reply that he didn't worry about his girlfriend leaving him when he was a couple of hours late. His biggest worry when he didn't show up on time was to be broken in a thousand pieces and scattered throughout several city blocks, never to be seen or heard from again, but he figured Avila's 'woman' wasn't quite in the same class as Ziva.

Figuring that Avila was close to being ready to talk, DiNozzo was about to close his game and get to work when a text came in from McGee. DiNozzo still wondered how people did interrogations before text messages. It was so much more efficient to have someone looking stuff up and getting it to you instantly than to have to fish around for information, only to have to decide later if it was true or not.

The message, probably sent from McGee's computer based on the length, read, "Avila, Joseph V. DOB 3-14-81. No military service. Prior misdemeanor charges for shoplifting, drunk and disorderly, possession of marijuana, DUI. No felony charges. Juvenile record sealed." Hmm. It certainly didn't sound like the resume of a man who would shoot four men and break the necks of four women, but maybe he had seen the guy who had.

"Wednesday night," DiNozzo finally barked. "Where were you?"

"Shit, man, I was at work," Avila whined.

"You mean guarding the empty building in Chevy Chase."

"Well, yeah, man. That's my job. I work for a private security firm." 'Private security firm' was one of those phrases that sounded impressive, but was usually run by a retired patrol cop and staffed by police academy wash-outs, kids trying to get security experience before moving onto bigger and better things, and dead-beats like Avila.

"The building that has a perfect view of the building where Captain Rodriguez lived."

"Who?"

"The woman who was killed on Wednesday night," DiNozzo said impatiently.

"I told you, man, I didn't have anything to do with that!" Avila protested.

"Shit, man," DiNozzo replied, mimicking the security guard perfectly, "I knew that already. The guy we're looking for is a whole lot smarter than you." Avila frowned, not knowing if he was being insulted or about to be set free or both. "As we see it, whoever killed Rodriguez and her boyfriend was watching them from the building that you were supposed to be guarding, so I'll ask you again: where were you on Wednesday night?"

"I told you, I was at work," Avila insisted.

"Where's your guard station?"

"First floor lobby," the guard replied automatically. "Right by the front door."

"Any other way into the building?"

Avila shook his head. "No way, man. The other doors are still blocked off. Plywood and construction equipment keep those doors from opening."

"So there's only one way in and out of the building?"

"You deaf, man? That's what I just said."

DiNozzo fixed him with a cold stare. "Now that's what I can't quite figure out," he said, his tone an odd mixture of curiosity and harshness. "If there's one way in and one way out, and you were guarding it the whole time, then either our killer is a ghost or you're lying to me. Now, I'll ask you again, where were you Wednesday night?"

"I told you, man, I was at work. And there ain't nobody who came or went, so maybe you are looking for a ghost."

"Or maybe you left your post just long enough to kill them."

"I didn't kill nobody!" Avila's voice had risen to near-panic. "I told you, man, I had nothing to do with nobody dying!"

"Uh-huh," DiNozzo said sarcastically as he rose from his chair. He stepped toward the door without another word.

"Wait, man!" Avila protested. "Where're you going?"

DiNozzo shrugged. "I have to find someone to book you," he said calmly.

"Book me?" His voice was now a near-shriek. "For what?"

Another shrug. "We'll start with obstruction of a federal investigation, but I'm going to see if I can add double homicide to the list."

"Double—no way, man, I didn't kill nobody! Listen, man, you don't need to book me for nothing." He looked suddenly defeated. "Okay, you're right, man. I wasn't at my post all night like I told you. There's this girl, Maria, she's kinda a classy bitch, but sometimes she likes slumming, you know? She comes by sometimes, we go up to one of the nice big office rooms on the top floor and, well, you know." DiNozzo was tempted to feign ignorance and make Avila explain, but decided not to. "I didn't want that to get back to my woman, 'cause if she found out that I was fucking some other girl on the side, she'd drop me right away and take off and take my kid with her. Shit, man, she's not going to find out, is she?"

DiNozzo ignored the question. "How long were you gone?"

Avila gave a defeated shrug. "Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour." Long enough for someone to get in, get in a position to watch Rodriguez's condo, and get out, especially if he knew her routines and knew when to arrive.

"You do this pretty often?"

A defeated nod. "Yeah, man," Avila said gloomily. "I mean, shit, man, it's Chevy Chase. There's ain't never anything going on around there. I don't know why those construction people think they need a security guard. Ain't gonna be any of those rich people taking anything from a construction site, that's for sure."

"How often?" DiNozzo asked. "How often are you away from your post?"

Avila shrugged. "I dunno, man. I work from when the construction people take off at four until midnight when my relief comes on. I'm sometimes away for half the shift, maybe more. But nothing's ever been stolen, man." Four hours a night was definitely enough time for someone to do surveillance on Rodriguez. "Shit, man. Are you going to tell my woman?"

"Nope," DiNozzo replied. Avila relaxed visibly before he added, "But she'll probably want to know why you lost your job."

"Lost my job? What the hell are you talking about?"

The NCIS agent shrugged as he again headed for the door. "I don't think your boss is going to be too happy when he finds out that you haven't been doing what he's been paying you to do." He glanced back just long enough to see Avila's head collapse onto the table in defeat. He almost felt bad for the guy, before he remembered that his unwillingness to actually do his job was what allowed a serial killer to get close enough to his next victims to kill them.


	12. Chapter 12

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 12**

* * *

"What are we looking for again?" McGee complained for the third time as he swung his flashlight around the dim, empty office room. It hadn't taken long after Joe Avila's interrogation to get in touch with the building manager and get access to the construction site in search of any trace of their serial killer, and in typical Gibbs fashioned, he had ordered his three field agents to check it out immediately.

"Anything that suggests a serial killer was here, Probie," DiNozzo replied. "But if all this field work is too hard for you, I'm sure Gibbs can find some more work for you to do with the forensics squad."

"Very funny," McGee muttered. It was getting close to 2200, and they still weren't anywhere near finished searching the building. He knew DiNozzo didn't mind the late night's work—as much—because Ziva was right there with them, but McGee had had plans, plans which had had to be canceled—again. He could tell by the tone in her voice when she told him that she understood that her understanding wasn't going to last forever.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been, McGee supposed. At least they were limited to the rooms that had a view of Rodriguez's apartment, a fact that Ziva had pointed out early on in the search, which probably saved them several hours of useless investigating. The former spy had brought along a set of rather impressive binoculars, which she had used on each floor as they ascended, to figure out where they should start looking. It wasn't until they arrived on the fifth floor that she announced she had a good view of Rodriguez's eleventh floor rooms.

Their search of the stairwells, which had been ongoing since they entered the building, revealed nothing of note: there were plenty of tracks of heavy-soled boots, but it was impossible to tell which might have belonged to a pair of combat boots and which might have been construction boots. And when McGee suggested shining a light that he had borrowed from Abby to look for flecks of boot polish, he discovered that there were no fewer than half a dozen construction materials that also reacted to the light. The stairwells glittered like the stars on a clear night.

They were now on the twelfth floor, and although there were only four to ten rooms per floor to search, depending on that particular floor's layout, it was slow going, and McGee was beginning to wonder if they would find anything before the construction crew returned at 0800, if at all. DiNozzo was beginning to look equally drained. It was only the Mossad liaison who continued as if her supply of energy were endless.

"Stop." That simple word came from that same Mossad liaison as she stood just inside a large room—probably a future conference room—her flashlight in her left hand, her right in the air in a halting motion. McGee and DiNozzo both continued to wave their lights around, but neither saw any indication of what had caught Ziva's attention.

"Uh, Ziva—," DiNozzo began.

"The window," she said simply, directing her flashlight about three feet above the floor of the large floor-to-ceiling window. "There is a clean area right there."

"So?" DiNozzo asked. McGee wasn't brave enough to contradict the trained assassin. "Anyone could have done that."

"It is about the right height for someone seated on the floor to look out. There is also a clean area on the floor." The beam of her flashlight moved, and McGee could see the amorphous spot that was cleaner than the rest of the dusty floor. "He would have been sitting here, likely for hours at a time, as he watched Rodriguez." She bent down close to the clear area on the window, careful not to disturb the scene, as she raised her binoculars to her eyes. "It is a clear angle."

Suddenly rejuvenated by the discovery, the three investigators got to work, placing their heavy evidence kits on the far side of the room. McGee set up their portable lights, which while not as good as overhead fluorescent lights would have been (the manager said they won't have electricity for another three or four days), provided more illumination than their three flashlights. They split up the tasks effortlessly and without complaint, the result of years of working together. DiNozzo had grabbed the camera and was shooting the entire scene—and multiple shots of Ziva—as McGee began marking footprints and Ziva reached for the fingerprint powder.

"There must be hundreds of fingerprints," DiNozzo commented as he stopped his photography to watch his partner. "Abby won't be happy with us."

"Probably not," Ziva agreed absently. "But if he was in the military, his fingerprints would be on file."

"Assuming he wasn't wearing gloves."

She didn't say anything for a minute as she captured a clear fingerprint from the window with one of their sticky print cards. "He was in a construction site with essentially no guard and dozens of men coming through every day. He would not have figured anybody would notice a few extra fingerprints. Besides, he was here for hours every night. How long can you stand to wear gloves?"

He glanced down at his own gloved hands before he admitted that she had a point. "Not as long as Avila was absent," he commented.

"Exactly. Do not forget to take pictures of the view of Rodriguez's building."

"I don't need you to tell me how to do my job," he scoffed, but then raised the camera to his eye and shot several of the building down and across the street. "McGrumpy! What've you got from the footprints?"

"Too much," McGee replied glumly. "People walked all over the place. I can make out at least ten distinct patterns."

"Collect them and sketch their paths."

"Tony, a lot of them are smudged and walked over each other's. I'm not sure how good of a path I can get for any of them."

"Do the best you can," DiNozzo said forcefully. "And maybe you should try your light trick that you learned today."

"It didn't work in the stairwell."

"Are you just going to sit there and complain all night, or are you actually going to try to get something done?"

"I hope they give you your own team soon, Tony. You certainly have the barking of orders thing down."

"Ha! You'd like that, wouldn't you?" McGee just rolled his eyes.

"And what are you doing, anyway? Other than telling people what to do?"

"Supervising, Probie. That's what a good senior field agent does. Maybe someday you'll lose your probie-ness and figure that out for yourself."


	13. Chapter 13

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 13**

_A/N: Kinda a filler chapter. Lots of scientific mumbo-jumbo that's not really mumbo-jumbo ahead._

* * *

One of Major Sonja Gracy's favorite things about being a forensic pathologist was that she got to keep very predictable hours. With the exception of when she was on-call with CID or the Air Force equivalent and had to respond to death scenes, there was rarely a need to get to work early or stay late. As such, she made an effort to have breakfast and dinner with her children whenever possible, and was proud that she could say it was only an infrequent event that kept her from either.

Normally, having breakfast with her kids was just that; three people who happened to be sitting at the same table while they ate. She read through her pathology and forensics journals, Maddie sometimes brought some reading material of her own, and Nate was often staring blearily into space. She couldn't even claim that she made breakfast, either; despite being the grandchildren of immigrants on either side of the family, both of her children were very much American, and as such, preferred Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Golden Grahams or Lucky Charms or some similar cold cereal to a real meal. Gracy, having grown up in a fairly German household, usually had a hard boiled egg, bread, and occasionally a slice of cheese.

Today, however, was a special day, for both the kids and for Gracy, and she decided to mark the occasion by making something the three of them could agree on: french toast, using some of the cinnamon raisin bread she picked up at Panera a few days before. For the kids, it was to prepare for the first day of school; for Gracy, it was to do something to keep her from running out of the house early in her excitement. Van Lester had stopped by her office before leaving the evening before to tell her that Captain Rodriguez's bones would be ready by the morning, and she was eager to see what the forensic anthropologist would find.

After feeding her children and sending them upstairs to get cleaned up and dressed in the clothes they had set out the night before, Gracy busied herself by packing the kids' lunches—another normal parenting task she preferred to do herself instead of hand off to the nanny—before heading upstairs to change. Knowing that she would be spending a good part of the day in the forensic anthropology lab, and thus in scrubs, she decided to forgo the uniform and just grabbed a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt. She was sure most people would be surprised at how infrequently she, and many other medical officers, actually wore their uniforms. She would be willing to bet that Captain Rodriguez, having had been a vet, would probably also arrive at the office in civilian clothes before changing into scrubs.

"Mariana, don't forget to pick them up right at three, and then take them over to the pool. Swim team practice is from 3:30 to five on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and four to five on Tuesdays and Thursdays." She already dreaded the day, which she knew would come soon, when Maddie and Nate would have separate sports schedules. She had a hard enough time keeping track of things with her and a full-time nanny; she didn't see how working couples managed children as well. "After swimming, it's right back here, and no TV until homework is done. I should be home before six to start dinner."

"Mom, it's the first day of school," Maddie said, rolling her eyes. "We're not going to have any homework."

"You never know, Maddie. Maybe things take off to a quicker start in fourth grade." She kissed each child on the forehead, despite Nate's protests. "Be good. I'll see you tonight."

After a chorus of "Bye, Mom"s, Gracy watched them take off in Mariana's car—technically, it was Gracy's car, but she bought it for the nanny's use—before climbing into her hybrid SUV—which she was already contemplating trading in for something German made—and heading off to AFIP. As excited as she was to see what Rodriguez's cervical vertebrae would reveal, she didn't even take the time to muse about how fast her kids were growing up.

---

"Okay, Van, I've been looking forward to this since you stopped by my office yesterday. Let's go look at some bones."

Dr. Van Lester glanced up to see one of his favorite pathologists in his doorway, her long white lab coat over a pair of navy blue scrubs. "You want to be a little bit more specific, Sonja? I've got quite the collection of bones here. I'll be glad to show you any of them."

Dr. Sonja Gracy rolled her eyes. "Very funny," she replied dryly. "Rodriguez's bones _are_ ready, right?"

"I checked first thing when I came in," he confirmed with a nod. "By the way, I found that report you were asking about, the FA report on the Macintosh case. Atlanto-axial dislocation, counter-clockwise motion."

"Just like the others," she said as she accepted the piece of paper he offered.

"Just like the others," he echoed, nodding again. "And it was a relief to see that even as a second-year resident, Dr. Sonja Gracy knew the value of forensic anthropology."

She grinned. "I'm just relieved that I really did remember giving the FA the bones, and I'm not losing my mind."

"Well, I'm not qualified to speak as to the state of your mind, but I am qualified to speak as to the state of Rodriguez's bones, so let's see what we can find."

He led her through a maze of offices and 'autopsy' rooms—the anthropologists called them autopsy rooms, but as far as Gracy was concerned, you needed to have at least a vague interest in flesh to do an autopsy—before arriving at Lester's lab, a space that was almost as cluttered as his office, but fortunately better ventilated. This was where, after removing the larger bits of decaying or burnt flesh in the autopsy rooms, Lester set his bones to boil in vats of diluted bleach and meat tenderizer until literally nothing but bare bones remained. Then he would set them out in anatomical position on one of the long tables—there was currently only one free—and begin his analysis.

"I turned the boiler off when I came in," he explained as he opened the lid to the large pot that Gracy assumed contained the remains of Rodriguez's head and neck, "so the bones should be cool enough to touch by now." By 'touch', he meant with gloved hands; he had once given a graduate student a very stern talking-to about the effects of the hands' dirt and oils on bones.

"Skull," he said unnecessarily as his purple Nitrile gloves pulled out the largest of the bones. "Minus the mandible and calverium, of course. I wish you pathologists weren't so eager with that bone saw. When I was a grad student, I had to testify in this case where the pathologist, in his quest to remove the brain, sawed right through the temporal fracture that caused the victim's death."

"Well, if you've got a better way of removing the brain whole, I'd be glad to hear it."

"Why would I care about an intact brain? No bones to analyze in there."

"Right," she said with a roll of her eyes. He continued to pull bones from the vat and arrange them on the clean plastic sheet on his table.

"Definitely a female skull," he commented, starting his analysis at the top. "The small occipital protuberance is the easiest feature to spot, but when you've looked at as many skulls as I have, you can start to see it in the features as well. Based on the features and the set of the jaw, I'd conclude Caucasoid as a rough guess, but I'm cheating right now and using my knowledge of her surname to say mixed Caucasoid and Mongoloid. All Hispanics are mixed Caucasoid and Mongoloid, as ethnically they are descended of Spanish colonists and Native Americans, but some have more Caucasoid features than Mongoloid, or vise versa. These days, there's a lot more interbreeding as well, so it's getting even harder to find a pure Caucasoid or Mongoloid or Negroid sample. Without using any measuring tools, I'm seeing a lot that is consistent with Caucasoid and not a lot of Mongoloid, so she's probably more Spanish than Native American, or there might be some more European ancestry than that."

"She _was_ fairly light-skinned," Gracy commented. "Using my experience as someone born and raised in southern Florida, I's say she probably had a white mother. My first boyfriend was half-Cuban, actually. My parents didn't care much for him."

"Because of his ancestry?"

"They're college professors in southern Florida. They don't have a problem with anyone's ancestry. It was his motorcycle they didn't care much for."

"I never would have taken you for a girl who goes for the bad boy, Sonja."

"I ended up marrying an Army officer, Van. I think we can safely say the bad boy thing was just a phase."

"Heh," Lester muttered before returning his attention to the skull. "The Stryker saw cut is smooth and even, so we can conclude that she had a skilled pathologist remove her calverium."

"Thanks, Van."

He chuckled before continuing. "Good dentition, which isn't much of a surprise, given that she was in the Army, which requires full dental examinations every six months. No caries or fillings, so she probably brushed and flossed regularly, and teeth are straight, so she probably had braces as a teenager. Those facts are consistent with a higher socioeconomic status."

"As is the fact that she went to college and then veterinary school."

"Unfortunately, people don't carve their education histories into their bones, so we have to find other ways of reaching the same conclusion," Dr. Lester said dryly. "Now, as much as I'd love to go on about the skull all day—and will come close to doing for my full report—I'm sure you're more interested in the cervical vertebrae."

"Well, the brain wasn't consistent with death by blunt force trauma, so, yes."

"Well, in the anthropology world, the vertebral column begins with the skull. Specifically, the foramen magnum and the occipital condyles, which articulate with the atlas, the C1 vertebra." He talked her through with his complete examination of the base of the skull and each of the vertebrae in turn, giving her a more thorough explanation of each bump and groove of each of the small bones than she had had since she had her forensics fellowship years before. "Now, this is where things start to get interesting," he said. "So, in order, the occipital condyles, the atlas, and the axis. As you know, the atlas isn't a complete vertebrae, just a ring of bone, and what would normally be the vertebral body is actually part of the axis, the odontoid process. It's the relationship between these two vertebrae that allow us to nod our heads," he demonstrated a nodding motion. "As well as shake them. So, if it weren't for the atlas and axis, we wouldn't be able to say 'yes' or 'no'," he smiled thinly at his own words, making Gracy wonder if it was supposed to be a joke. "Now what we have here is a posterior dislocation of the odontoid in association with a fracture of the alar. Unfortunately, as the ligaments and the rest of the soft tissue have been boiled away, we can't see the direction of the ligamental tears, which would give us a better idea of the exact forces and directions of the break. When I can tell you, though, is that the break was to the counter-clockwise motion, as indicated by these fractures here and here." He pointed out the faint cracks in the sides of the first vertebra. "Now, if we take this to the scanning microscope…" Gracy stopped listening as he started to get into the minutiae of each of the microscopic fractures and the compressibility of the Haversian canals. It was only the silence that had fallen over the lab that told her that he was done.

"So, her neck was broken," Gracy said simply. The anthropologist gave her a long-suffering glance.

"If simple explanations got the job done, Sonja, you would be able to write 'brain stopped working' on all of your death certificates under cause of death. Yes, her neck was broken, by a violent counter-clockwise motion."

She nodded slowly. "There was one question we had about the mechanism of death," she said. "Is it possible to determine if the killer had been standing behind her or in front of her?"

"Hmm," Lester murmured. "I must admit, I've never thought about that, but it would make a difference, wouldn't it? In fact, that would be the difference between a right-hand dominant murder and a left-hand dominant murder. I don't have an answer for you right now, but I have a good idea on how we can get one. I'll give the guys over at the University of Tennessee Body Farm a call and see if they can do some experiments for me. Hopefully they have a left-handed grad student around who's willing to break the necks of a few corpses in the name of science."


	14. Chapter 14

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 14**

* * *

After a thorough but fruitless search through Staff Sergeant Nicholas Jasper's apartment on Wednesday, the Major Crimes Response Team at NCIS concluded that while Jasper lived in the quintessential bachelor pad—his entertainment system and DVD collection prompted an impressed whistle from DiNozzo—there was nothing in it that appeared to be even indirectly related to his murder, with the exception of one picture of him and Rodriguez that was sitting out on the kitchen counter. Unlike Rodriguez's, his apartment, which was on the third floor, was in the back of his building, with only the alley between his and the next building as a view. It would have been difficult for anybody to have looked in.

The next morning brought another call for the team to head over to CID for another conference with the team there. "I think Wang calls more of these meetings than Tony called campfires while he was in charge," McGee grumbled as the four piled into the Charger for the drive over to Ft. Belvoir.

"No," Ziva contradicted. "Tony called more campfires. These just seem more annoying because they involve driving."

"And I used to think that there was nothing more annoying than Tony's campfires."

"I'm _right here_," DiNozzo said indignantly from the front passenger seat.

"Yes, we know, Tony. We can see you," Ziva replied.

"I think he means he doesn't want us talking about him to his face," McGee explained. Ziva shrugged.

"I believe that technically we are talking behind his back," she pointed out.

"That's just an expression, Ziva."

"She knows that, McObvious. She's trying to annoy me, and you're just encouraging her."

"What'd you do, DiNozzo, leave the toilet seat up again?"

"Actually, Boss, if you must know—"

"Forget I asked," Gibbs cut him off. It was easier to pretend that his agents didn't have a social life than it was to hear about it.

They arrived at CID headquarters and immediately made their way to the conference room, not even bothering checking anywhere else first. Sure enough, they found the team of CID agents, complete with their former special agent in charge, sitting around the long table. "We got a preliminary report from Major Gracy regarding Captain Rodriguez's broken neck," Agent Wang began without preamble. "We're expecting a complete report from Dr. Lester soon. Apparently, Lester thinks it might be possible to distinguish between the assailant being in front of and behind the victim, but we have to wait for some experiments before they can be sure." He paused, then asked, "Does that mean anything to anyone?"

"Rodriguez and the other women were killed with a standard combatives neck fracture," Gibbs informed the room. "I'd say most members of the armed forces are taught the theory behind it, but obviously, not everybody has done it. Most people are taught to approach from the back, but Dr. Gracy wanted to know if it was possible for the assailant to be facing his victims when he broke their necks. It is, and I asked if the fracture would look the same or not, depending on the technique. If this guy was facing his victims, the medical examiners informed me that he would have had to be using his left hand."

"Can't be that many left-handed former soldiers who know how to kill a person by breaking their necks," Hollis Mann remarked.

"It's not exactly something you register," Gibbs pointed out.

"It might help narrow things down," she countered.

"Depending on what the final report says," he finished.

"Either way," Wang interjected. "It could be significant. I agree with Dr. Gracy; this sort of crime suggests a personal identification with the victims—at least, the women. I think our guy would have wanted to see their faces as they died." He rose from his chair to the white board, marker in hand, before writing 'Perp: left handed?' He returned to his seat before asking, "What about our suspected surveillance spot? Forensics come back with anything yet?"

"Not yet," Gibbs answered. "My team collected twelve boot prints and over a hundred fingerprints. It's going to take Abby awhile to run that."

"Have her send some of it over to Chris. Two hands should lessen the workload. Did you find anything in Jasper's apartment?"

"Nothing," DiNozzo began. He was going to add more, but Wang interrupted.

"I'm not surprised," he said. "I don't think our guy knew who Jasper was before he killed him. There's a change in the pattern—he didn't take Jasper's ID, the way he took those of the other men. I think that means that he was surprised by who he had killed."

"Maybe surprised that he killed a Marine?" Mann suggested. "It could be that the perp has something against women in the military, but looks on the men who serve as honorable, doing their duty to their country. He might have left the ID out to honor Jasper."

"How does that fit into the theory that the killer served in the Army?" McGee asked.

"Maybe he had a female officer he didn't get along with, and is symbolically killing her again and again," DiNozzo suggested.

"That could be," Mann agreed. "He got along well with his fellow men in the unit, but not the female officer."

"No," Gibbs said thoughtfully, shaking his head. "He was confident in his ability to snap a woman's neck using his hands, which means he had done it before. That means he was a combat soldier, maybe infantry or even Rangers or special forces."

"And there are no women in combat positions," Mann said, finishing his thought.

"The first victim was a nurse," one of the CID agents chimed in. "Maybe he had a problem with one of the Army nurses."

"Or maybe the problem is with Macintosh herself," DiNozzo added. Mann shook her head.

"We looked into Macintosh's background, her contacts, everything, and we couldn't find anybody who would want her dead. We looked at it again after Hamilton died, but there was still nothing."

"No spurned boyfriends or patients who were rejected because she was an officer and they weren't?"

"Not every nurse is Florence Nightingale, DiNozzo," Gibbs pointed out. "And there's nothing to say the killer wasn't also an officer."

"Well, before we continue going in circles about what we know and what we don't, there is something we can add to the 'know' column." Wang again rose to the board, this time writing 'Combat history'.

"Great," Gibbs said sarcastically. "So we're looking for a combat soldier who served sometime before 2005 and may or may not be left-handed. That suspect list shouldn't take too long to run."

"He was probably separated from the Army before 2007, when black boots were completely phased out," Mann said thoughtfully. "If he had been issued tan boots, he probably would have worn those to kill Rodriguez and Jasper."

"Unless he likes shining boots," Gibbs disagreed. "It's something that's neat and methodical. Soldiers are taught to take pride in how well they have polished their boots. Could be something he still takes pride in." He stopped to take a swallow of coffee before adding, "A colonel once gave me an achievement medal for having well-polished boots." He said it matter-of-factly, without a hint of bragging.

"A medal? For having shiny boots? Seriously, Boss?" DiNozzo asked. He was quick to add, "Not that I don't think you deserved it, Boss."

"There is one thing we still haven't discussed," Wang continued, ignoring the NCIS agents. "The timing between deaths. The first one was in January 2003, then October 2005, then December 2007. And then he took an almost four-year break before killing again. Now, at the FBI, we would look at unusual absences of activity as a sign that the perp either killed without us knowing about it or was incarcerated."

"But here you also have to consider re-assignment and deployment," McGee pointed out.

"Exactly. There aren't any missing and unaccounted-for female Army officers in the last four years, so we can exclude the possibility of us missing a case or him killing on a different base, which leaves incarceration and deployment."

"Unless he just didn't feel like killing anyone until now," DiNozzo said. The others stopped and looked at him, and he shrugged. "I don't see what's so unusual about that. Even killers take vacations."

"Pattern killers are methodical," Wang said slowly, as if dumbing down his explanations. "They do things on a timeline and do things the same way each time. That's why they're called pattern killers. If anything, the urge to kill increases with time, and the murders get closer together, not further apart. They're controlled by that urge. They can't take vacations from it." DiNozzo frowned at the explanation, but didn't say anything further.

"I doubt he's still in the military," Mann said suddenly, her voice thoughtful. "He's been killing in the DC area for at least eight years. That's quite a long time for someone to stay at the same base, especially if we're going to keep assuming he was enlisted."

"Holly's right," Gibbs agreed. "Most assignments last two to four years before it's time to move. In combat positions, usually the shorter end of that range."

"So that leaves incarceration," Wang said with a nod. "Statistically, most pattern killers who have been locked up were arrested for lesser crimes—stalking, DUI, drug charges, parole violations, tax evasion—"

"Tax evasion?" DiNozzo interrupted with a frown. "Seriously?"

Wang ignored him, as before. "They also kill within three months of release. So we're looking for someone who has been released from prison in the last three months, arrested after December 2007, and with prior combat service in the Army. Actually, better make it any service, just to be safe. Mitchell, Jane, make a list."

"McGee will help," Gibbs added, volunteering his agent's service. Wang looked like he was going to disagree, but ended up nodding his assent.

"Fine," he said. "Gibbs, have Ms. Sciuto send over some of the evidence from the construction site to Chris. Maybe have her send the footprints while she takes the fingerprints or something. I don't care. Colonel, if you and Gibbs could stick around, I'd like to have another brainstorming session." Gibbs had had enough brainstorming with Agent Wang to last him a lifetime, but decided to keep his mouth shut. "Donaldson, DiNozzo, David." He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it when nothing came to mind. "Go do something productive," he finally said. Gibbs watched with some amusement as his two agents all but bolted from the room.

"Didn't you all come in the same car?" Mann asked, also watching DiNozzo and David.

"Yup."

"Then where are they going?"

He shrugged. "Hell if I know. I'm just glad that I have the keys."


	15. Chapter 15

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 15**

_A/N: I feel the need to pre-emptively apologize for this chapter. It just doesn't work, and I can't figure out why--if I could, I would fix it. I guess I'm just not good at writing Gibbs. Please, let me know if you have any suggestions for how I can make it better._

* * *

Retired Lt. Colonel Hollis Mann pulled into the familiar driveway and smiled slightly at the sight of the familiar car already parked there. _Four years, and he's still incapable of change_, she thought with equal amounts of amusement and sadness. She should have figured as much; that was one of the reasons why she left in the first place. The yellow muscle car was different, though; she couldn't quite figure that one out.

The brainstorming session had gone reasonably well, at least as well as could be expected, considering Gibbs' obvious lack of interest in being there and Wang's obsession with the white board and astonishing ability to talk in circles. Mann had the feeling that they would still be there if not for the fact that Gibbs had gotten a call—probably from DiNozzo and David, who were likely told to call and get him out at a pre-arranged time—and abruptly stated that he was needed back at NCIS. She had tried to get a hold of him a few hours later, but he wasn't answering either his cell phone or his office phone. She had finally called DiNozzo, who admitted that his boss hadn't been in the office since he had gotten a call around three and left without explanation. DiNozzo seemed to be in wonder about that fact; it was probably the earliest Gibbs had ever left the building.

Which is what brought her here, to Gibbs' house. She hadn't really expected him to be home in the middle of the afternoon, but figured that even if he weren't, she knew how to get in—she doubted he had started locking the door in the last few years. The only thing she hadn't quite figured out was how to avoid getting shot when she surprised him in his home when he arrived.

But there was no need to worry about that, since he was home. Figuring that his doorbell was still broken, she tried knocking, but go no response. No big surprise there, either—he was probably in the basement, working on another damned boat. So she let herself in—the door was still unlocked, as she suspected—and made her way toward the door that would lead to the basement stairs.

"Still leaving your front door unlocked, I see," she said as she began to descend the stops, then stopped abruptly. There was Gibbs at his workbench, as expected. What she hadn't expected to see was a boy around seven or eight with dark blue eyes and buzzed dark hair, his hands stopped in place on the sanding block that was working on one of the exposed beams of the boat. Nor had she expected to see a slightly older girl, maybe ten, with long black hair and startling blue eyes sitting off to the side with an open book and notebook on her lap. "Oh," she finally said, not sure of what to think.

"They're not mine," Gibbs said dryly. For some reason, that made the little boy laugh. "Their nanny forgot to pick them up from school and their mother is at work, and they called me."

"Mom did say she was a flake," the girl chimed in. "She was kinda mean, too. But Mom'll probably fire her now."

Gibbs smiled slightly before continuing the introductions. "This is Maddie and Nate Gracy, and this my friend, former Lt. Colonel Mann. She used to work at CID."

"Hello," Mann said, giving them an uncertain smile. The boy, Nate, smiled back, but the girl just gave her an appraising glance. Mann wasn't sure how she felt about being sized up by a ten-year-old.

"My mom used to work at CID, too," she finally said.

"Oh?" Mann replied. "What's her name?"

"Major Sonja Gracy." The name sounded familiar, but Mann couldn't quite place it. For some reason, she was fairly sure it wasn't as a CID agent.

And then it came to her as she remembered one of Wang's first comments in the meeting that morning. "The medical examiner?"

Maddie nodded. "She's a forensic pathologist," she said with authority. Mann guessed that she had recently learned the term and liked the exotic way it sounded. "She decided she liked that better than being a CID agent, so she went back after she and Gibbs caught the guy who killed my dad."

Mann must have looked surprised at that statement, because Gibbs said, "You had to have heard about it, Holly. It was all over CID, and that was before you left. Major Scott Gracy, Intelligence officer, killed in Iraq and brought back to the States by the insurgents." She did remember, now that he had mentioned it. She also remembered that the wife, an Army pathologist, had been forced to the do the autopsy at gunpoint. No, not at gunpoint. She gaped slightly at turned back to the dark-haired girl, whose attention was again fixed on the textbook on her lap. It had been Gracy's five-year-old daughter who was held at gunpoint. That must have been Maddie.

If the child had noticed Mann's astonished reaction, she didn't make a big deal of it as she continued to do her homework. "There's a bonus question on equilateral triangles," she said to Gibbs. "Equilateral triangles are the same length on all three sides, so all three angles must be the same, right?"

Instead of simply answering the question, Gibbs handed over three unsharpened carpenter's pencils. "These are all the same length," he replied. "Make a triangle and see."

She nodded as she accepted the pencils and arranged them on the floor before stepping back and studying the triangle critically. "They're the same," she finally declared. "So if all the angles are the same, and all the angles in a triangle add up to 180, then each angle is 180 divided by three which is," she took a second to think about it before declaring, "sixty."

"You're pretty good at math," Mann commented. Maddie nodded slightly as she recorded her answer in her notebook.

"I like math," she said. "We had timed tests on the first day of school, to see how many multiplication problems we could get in five minutes, and I finished all of them in a minute and a half. And I got them all right."

"Multiplication is easy," her younger brother scoffed from his position the boat.

"What do you know?" Maddie shot back. "You're only in second grade. You can only do multiplication with numbers less than ten."

"I can do eleven, too!" he protested.

"Then what's eleven times eleven?" He had to think about that for a moment before admitting that he didn't know. Maddie just gloated for a minute before putting her math book away and pulling out another book to replace it. Mann thought that seemed like a lot of homework for someone her age.

"Maybe I should come back later," she finally said. Gibbs looked mildly surprised at the statement.

"Gracy'll be here soon to pick up the kids," he informed her. That would be interesting. He wondered why this kind of thing kept happening to him; first it was Stephanie, Jen, and Holly. Now it was Holly and Gracy. What would be next, Fornell calling him to tell him that Diane wanted to have a word?

Sure enough, less than five minutes had gone by before they heard the front door opening again. "Hey, Gibbs," Major Sonja Gracy greeted as she descended the stairs, clad in khakis and a tank top, her auburn hair in a single French braid down her back. "I got your message, obviously. Sorry about that."

"I just hope it doesn't happen again."

"It won't," Gracy replied. "I've already informed Mariana that she has until Saturday evening to clean out her stuff. I'll have to check with the au pair agency tonight to find a suitable replacement. Maybe a German-speaking Israeli."

"Oh! What about Officer David? She speaks German."

"Officer David has a job already, Maddie, and it's a lot more exciting than driving you to swim practice."

"Israeli?" Gibbs asked, not quite following her line of thinking.

"Compulsory military service. She'd know how to take orders from a major," Gracy said simply. She didn't add that the military service would also mean that the nanny would be able to defend the children in case of any danger. The kids' safety was her top priority; considering what Maddie had already been through, she would hire a Secret Service agent as a nanny if she could.

Gibbs nodded at the explanation, then frowned as he suddenly registered her attire. "I thought you were at work."

"I was. I had an autopsy of an OIF soldier who died suddenly during MEDEVAC. Turned out to be an undiagnosed epidural hematoma. He had probably loosened the straps of his kevlar to let it breathe a bit, and it must have slipped when they came under attack." She looked confused at the question, but then realized what he was referring to. "I wear scrubs most of the time at work. I don't wear my uniform most days." She belatedly realized that there was another adult in the basement. "Colonel Mann, right?"

"That's right," Mann replied with a slight smile. Now that she was face-to-face with the pathologist, she could remember getting lost in the corridors of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology until she was finally directed to an autopsy suite, where a slightly haggard-looking Captain Sonja Gracy had put her autopsy on hold in order to answer a question about some bruising she had found around Lt. Hamilton's neck. That seemed like a lifetime ago; it had been almost six years. "You must be Major Gracy."

Gracy nodded once. "Sorry about Maddie and Nate. I'm sure the last thing you needed was pair of kids underfoot when you needed to talk to Gibbs. Come on, guys. Let's go."

"Can we stay longer?" Nate asked in a whine. "We're already late for practice."

"By the time we get there, it'll be over," Maddie agreed. "Please, Mom? I haven't even gotten to work on the boat yet."

"Up," Gracy replied, shaking her head. "And since you missed practice, we'll just have to go to the pool on base during lap swim hours. I'll be your coach tonight."

"You?" Nate asked in disbelief.

"Hey!" she protested as she herded them up the stairs. "I was an NCAA Division I national champion. I think I can handle coaching a six-year-old and nine-year-old."

"I'm almost seven!" Nate protested. "Oh! Mom! Can we go sailing with Agent Gibbs on Saturday? Please?"

Gracy looked surprised at the request and turned to Gibbs questioningly. "It's up to Agent Gibbs," she said slowly.

"It was his idea. He said it's up to you," Nate replied. Gracy finally shrugged.

"Then I don't see why not." She smiled slightly as she turned back to Gibbs. "You bring the boat, I'll bring lunch."

He nodded. "I'll give you a call with the details." She gave a quick nod in return and turned her attention back to getting the kids out the door. Mann could hear the children arguing in what sounded like German as their voices faded away.

And suddenly, the picture was very clear, and she wondered why she hadn't seen it from the first moment Gibbs said anything: the widow with a terrible tragedy, the children, even the reddish tint to Gracy's hair—it had Gibbs' involvement written all over it. "Oh," she said with the realization. "You're sleeping with her."

Gibbs looked surprised at the question, but simply said, "I don't see how that's your business."

He was right, of course. It wasn't really her business. She was the one who had left—left him, left DC, left the continent—and she certainly hadn't expected him to pine after her forever, if at all. That was the reason why she left, in fact. He didn't seem to be able to form any lasting emotional attachments. Well, that wasn't true—he did have lasting emotional attachments, but they were to a long-dead wife and daughter, and she had known there was no way to compete with that. But to be faced with the realization that she had been replaced—and replaced by someone who possibly _could _break through that wall he had built around him after Shannon's and Kelly's deaths, on account of her own tragic loss—was a lot for her to handle at once, and so she lashed out with probably the most illogical thing she could have said. "She's practically a teenager!" It was a silly comment to make; they were obviously both consenting adults. Besides, Gracy couldn't have been _that_ much younger than Mann. She did the math quickly in her head and realized that the pathologist could have been almost a decade younger than her. So maybe she _could_ be that much younger.

He looked amused at the statement. "I didn't think they were giving teenagers medical degrees and promoting them to major," he said dryly. "Her daughter's a hell of a lot closer to being a teenager than she is."

She barely resisted the first comeback that came to mind: _and how old would your daughter be?_ It would probably be the meanest thing she could have said, and would have been counterproductive; Gibbs would have clammed up and never said another word to her.

Gibbs seemed to have sensed that she had something to say to him—it couldn't have been too hard, she had shown up at his house unannounced—and asked, "Did you need something, Holly, or did you just come to question me about my dating habits?"

As soon as he asked the question, she realized that she didn't know the answer. She wasn't quite sure why it was that she came. She hadn't driven through the beginnings of DC rush hour traffic to sand a boat for old time's sake, that was for sure. "I wanted to see you," she finally said. "Away from the case, away from DiNozzo's jokes, and away from Wang and his damned white board."

He smiled at that last one and softened visibly. "What happened, Holly...that wasn't you. That was me. It was all my damned fault." She had a feeling that with his track record, he had probably said those words a lot, and meant them each time.

She nodded and found that she had to look away. "Is it different now, Jethro? With Major Gracy?"

He seemed to be weighing his words for a moment before he spoke again. "I'm not sleeping with Gracy," he finally said. "The nanny forgot to pick the kids up from school and Maddie called me when she couldn't get a hold of her mother." He paused to measure a beam before speaking again. "She didn't want to be a pathologist anymore after her husband died and she transferred to CID. She was assigned to my team as a liaison two and a half years ago. On her first big case with the team, we found out that one of her closest friends had orchestrated her husband's death, and we put him and the bastard who tortured and killed Scott Gracy behind bars for good. And then she went back to the medical corps and was transferred to Tripler. I ran into her more than a year ago on a case in Baghdad, and that was the last time we spoke to each other until she showed up at NCIS to the autopsy for this case a week ago. I didn't even know they were back in DC until Gracy got called in."

She was sure he was telling the truth; Leroy Jethro Gibbs was nothing if not honest. For as much as he said, though--probably the longest speech she had ever heard from him--she just doubted that there wasn't more to the story. "She likes you," she said matter-of-factly. She knew it went both ways, but Gibbs scoffed at the words.

"Do you find it so hard to believe that a woman would be attracted to me?" he asked dryly. She smiled thinly at his words, even as she realized that Sonja Gracy was probably the only woman she knew who could hurt Gibbs as much as, if not more, than he could hurt her.

She stood abruptly from the step she had been using as a chair. "I should probably go. I'm sure I'll see you tomorrow when Wang decides to hold another one of his damned meetings."

He nodded, either at what she had said or what she hadn't. "Good night, Holly."

"Good night, Jethro." When she turned back to glance at him at the top of the steps, she found him leaning over the bare beams of his boat, sanding away.


	16. Chapter 16

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 16**

_A/N: Sorry this chapter is so short. It was originally part of the next chapter, but that made it too long, and I thought this was more suspenseful. Yes, I am that mean :)_

* * *

"Give me some good news, Abs," Gibbs ordered as he strode into the forensics lab at NCIS on Friday morning. He placed a Caf-Pow on the lab bench to punctuate his words.

"There were no American deaths in Afghanistan this week," Abby Sciuto replied promptly. "I was watching ZNN this morning while eating my Wheaties."

"You have Wheaties for breakfast?"

"It's the breakfast of champions, Gibbs. Actually, I usually have Coco Puffs, but I realized this morning that the box was empty and I didn't want to make an early morning trip to the convenience store to get some more. The guy who works there from midnight to eight is really creepy. I guess that's a good thing, because I would think that creepy guys are less likely to get robbed, but he's a little bit _too_ creepy."

He didn't want to contemplate what the Goth scientist would consider 'too creepy', so he just let it go. "I meant with the case."

"I figured that, Gibbs, but I don't have any good news on the case, so I gave you the next best thing."

He stifled a sigh. "Well, what do you have?"

"About eighty fingerprints left to run. It's really slow going. Some of them are just smudges, which I can't do anything with, but others are just kinda smudged, so I've been trying to clean them up just in case one of them might be our killer. Really, you only need one point of reference on a fingerprint for it to stand up in court, but before we can even think about going to court, we need to identify some of these fingerprints, which you need quite a few more points than one to do. Did you know that a two-point match is only--"

"Abby."

"Right, Gibbs. So far, I've only found guys with construction permits. It seems our building manager is only hiring actual registered construction workers, which is what he's supposed to do but is somewhat unusual because hardly anyone follows those rules. It's a lot cheaper to hire workers without permits and pay them less, so that's what most building managers do. But I guess since he's building an office complex in Chevy Chase, money is not really the object. How much do you think he's getting paid for that building, Gibbs? A couple million?"

"I really don't know, Abs."

"Of course not. Sorry, Gibbs. Anyway, even though they're all registered construction workers and union members, there are a few unsavory ones in the bunch. One guy had been arrested for armed robbery, and they _still_ hired him. There were a few other smaller charges, like marijuana possession and disturbing the peace and stuff like that."

"Any with military service?"

"Yes," she declared confidently. "Two. Twin brothers, actually, who are part of the electrician's union. They served four-year tours in the Navy together and got out last year."

He felt his hopes fall again. "Not our guys, then."

"Definitely not. They were on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific in December 2007, when Lt. Olafsen was killed."

"Well, keep at it, Abby. Let me know if you find something." He half-expected her to interrupt his walk away with news that she found something, but he made it to the elevator without another word from her.

He made his way back up to the bullpen to find all three of his agents simultaneously talking on their phones and checking computers. He waited until McGee had put down his phone before asking for an update.

"Our search of former soldiers who were recently released from prison yielded forty-two names," he began.

"That seems like a lot."

"Well, not really, when you consider that that was a nation-wide search and included anybody with any Army service. Some of those are older guys, we're talking Panama and Desert Storm era--" He cut himself off to see Gibbs looking back at him with eyebrows raised. "Not that Desert Storm veterans are old, Boss, I just meant that..." He realized that he wasn't going to dig himself out of that hole, so he just moved on. "There are a few Vietnam-era soldiers, too." He grimaced and tried to move past talking about soldiers' ages. "Most of the forty-two we found don't have any connection to the DC area, but we're running the service records and last known whereabouts of all of them, just to be safe."

"Anyone look promising?"

The junior agent shook his head. "Nothing yet, Boss, but we'll keep you posted."

"I might have something," DiNozzo announced as he hung up his phone. The other three turned to him in interest. "Former Sergeant First Class Thomas Emerson, Jr. He was an infantry sergeant with the 10th Mountain Division, received an honorable discharge in April 2004 after twenty years service."

"Right between the first two murders," Ziva pointed out. DiNozzo nodded, then continued.

"His last assignment before he separated was at the Pentagon and he stayed in the DC area—just outside of Fairfax, VA—since he left the Army. He was arrested fifteen months ago for assault in a domestic dispute and just got out last month. His ex-wife hasn't seen or heard from him since he went in, and it sounds like she has no desire to. No small wonder there, Boss—he broke her jaw and three of her ribs with the butt of his rifle." Gibbs saw McGee wince at the words. "It gets even more interesting than that. His wife was also in the Army, an orthopedics tech at Walter Reed who made Staff Sergeant before she separated. Apparently, while he was beating her, Emerson said, 'You're the reason why they don't let women in the infantry, you bitch.' That was a direct quote from the wife."

"Good work, DiNozzo," Gibbs said with a nod. "Track him down and bring him in. I'll let Wang know."

"That's not all, Boss. The former Mrs. Emerson knew Captain Macintosh. The nurse told the ex-wife that she should leave her husband back in 2003. That was six weeks before Macintosh was killed."


	17. Chapter 17

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 17**

* * *

Gibbs could see the reflection of CID Special Agent Wang in the two-way mirror as they silently stood side-by-side in the small observation chamber of the CID interrogation room. After Gibbs' team tracked down former Staff Sergeant Emerson, the two senior special agents argued about who would get to do the interrogation. Wang had tried to claim seniority, Gibbs replied that it was his team who found and brought in Emerson. Finally, Hollis Mann stepped in and said that it was females—and specifically female officers—who Emerson had a problem with. She should be the one doing the interrogation. Knowing how good the former lieutenant colonel was at getting information out of suspects—and elderly Scottish medical examiners—Gibbs had agreed. Realizing he was outnumbered, Wang reluctantly gave his consent as well.

Emerson had been waiting alone in Interrogation for almost half an hour, which for a guy who had lived his entire adult life under very strict schedules and punctuality, was practically a lifetime, and Gibbs could see his impatience in the set of his jaw and the way he sat. He was exactly as one could expect from a former Army sergeant: his hair was still buzzed short, a tight tee-shirt advertised that he still kept his tall figure lean and muscular, a tattoo of the 10th Mountain Division insignia on his right arm told anyone who cared to know what he had done and seen.

He looked up expectantly as the door to Interrogation opened. "Good afternoon, Sergeant," Mann said calmly.

"Ma'am," Emerson replied with a nod. Gibbs frowned; he expected a bit more anger. "Could you tell me what this is about, ma'am? The agents who brought me here identified themselves as NCIS. I've never had anything to do with the Navy."

"The terms of your parole state that you can be brought in for question at any time."

"Yes, ma'am, I'm aware." He was being far more polite than Gibbs expected from a murder suspect. He could tell by Wang's expression that he was thinking the same thing. "But I would have expected that to be with Fairfax PD, not NCIS and CID." He glanced around as if looking for someone else in the room before his eyes returned to Mann.

Mann nodded slightly; she knew that, of course. "Have you been living in Fairfax long?"

"Since early 2002, ma'am. I was working in the CENTCOM office at the Pentagon prior to my last deployment to Afghanistan. I ETS'ed on April 7, 2004, about eight months after I returned." He shook his head slowly. "Leaving the Army when I did, that was a mistake. I spent my entire adult life in uniform and I wasn't ready for the outside. But that deployment, ma'am, I saw some shit I didn't ever want to see again, pardon my language. I couldn't risk getting sent back over there."

"This isn't right," Wang muttered. "He's being too nice."

"He doesn't know Holly was an officer yet," Gibbs pointed out. "Maybe it'll change."

"Tenth Mountain," Mann was saying. "You guys covered a lot of new ground in Afghanistan."

"Yes, ma'am," Emerson said, a touch of pride in his voice. "We didn't have the infrastructure there that they have now. A lot of it was pretty rough going for us, but rough is how 10th Mountain does it." He eyed her critically for a second. "You served, ma'am?"

She nodded. "Eighty-second Airborne."

"Hooah," Emerson with a approval. "Airborne we like. They're almost as tough as they think they are." He gave her a grin. "Been deployed?"

"Two tours, Panama and Iraq." Panama had been fairly early in her career, Iraq near the end. Two completely different experiences, two completely different jobs. She hadn't joined CID until a few years after she made captain, when she realized there wasn't much further a female intelligence officer could go in an infantry division. "I worked as an intelligence officer and spent most of my time studying maps and analyzing troop movements." Well, that was true for the first deployment, at least.

"Good," Gibbs said with a nod of approval. "She worked in that she was an officer and that she was given what a combat soldier would consider to be soft work—a POG position."

"POG?" Wang echoed with a frown.

"People other than grunts," Gibbs explained. "People who aren't normally shot it in their day-to-day jobs. It's an insult—implies that they don't know what combat is really like." It was mostly a Marine term, but he had heard some soldiers use it. The last time he had heard it was in a quiet corner of a morgue of an Army combat hospital half a world away.

To their surprise, Emerson was nodding his approval. "There wasn't much we could have done without combat support. Your people kept us alive more times than I'd care to think about."

"That's not right," Wang muttered. "He's not acting right." Gibbs could tell by Mann's body language that she was thinking the same thing. She abruptly changed the topic.

"Did you happen to know a Captain Irene Macintosh?" she asked.

Emerson looked confused for a second. "The nurse? The one who was murdered some years back?"

"Ah-ha!" Wang said. "He just admitted to knowing Macintosh. We can use that."

"We already knew that Macintosh knew his wife," Gibbs reminded him. "This doesn't tell us anything."

"So you knew her," Mann stated. Emerson half shook his head in an indecisive gesture.

"Not really, ma'am. I only met her once. She worked with my wife."

"Ex-wife."

"Yes, ma'am. Susan. Captain Macintosh told Susan that she should have left me."

"That must have made you angry."

"At the time, yes, ma'am, but looking back, I wish she had done it. I was in a bad place when I got back from Afghanistan. I was angry and drinking and took a lot out on Susan. Captain Macintosh told her that there wasn't anything she could do until I was ready to get some help and get better, but Susan's a fighter. She wasn't ready to give up on me, even though I sure as hell had given up on myself already. I wish I could say that things got better after Susan told me what Captain Macintosh had said, but I had to reach rock-bottom before that could happen."

"Aww, shit," Gibbs muttered darkly. "He's not our guy." Wang frowned.

"He just admitted to having been angry at Macintosh."

"He didn't do it, Wang. Not unless God told him to kill Jasper and Rodriguez. He went off to jail and found religion." The disgust in his voice wasn't from the idea of finding religion—he was sure it would help a good number of troops coming back from war—but at the realization that he had gotten his hopes up about Emerson. Wang, apparently, wasn't ready to quit.

"He fits the pattern," he argued. "The Army service, his anger toward women, toward Macintosh. Hell, Gibbs, even the arrest fits."

"Everything except for the fact that he didn't do it."

Mann had apparently reached the same conclusion. "Where were you on Wednesday night?"

"Anger management group," Emerson said automatically. "It's court ordered, but I would go anyway. I'm in a better place now, ma'am, and if me being there to tell my story and to tell how low I had gotten helps even one other man realize that he can't solve his problems with a fist or a gun, I'll keep going for the rest of my life. Group is from 1900 to 2100. After group each week, three of us stay late for a prayer group, to recommit our actions to God and ask for His help in our struggle. We were there until 2230, and then it's a half hour drive to my apartment. I got home a little after 2300. You can confirm that with my neighbor, Mrs. Wittgenstein. She watches my every movement pretty closely. She doesn't trust me much."

"Drs. Gracy and Mallard estimated time of death between 1900 and 2300," Wang commented, defeat finally in his voice. "Emerson was in Virginia that whole time."

Just then, Gibbs' cell phone rang. He checked the display before answering. "What is it, DiNozzo?"

There was a pause, and then: "_It is Ziva, Gibbs._"

"Well, then call me from your own damned phone. What is it?"

"_I do not believe that Sergeant Emerson killed Captain Rodriguez and Sergeant Jasper and the others. Prior to his arrest, he worked for a security consulting firm in Virginia. We have just spoken to his former boss. He was at a conference in Seattle, Washington from September 28 to October 5, 2005, when Lt. Hamilton was killed._"

"We just realized that," he said with a sigh. "Emerson found jailhouse religion."

Another pause. "_I do not know if I am familiar with that term, Gibbs._"

"He went to jail and found God, Ziva. He'll probably start talking about making amends and whatever the other eleven steps are."

She didn't bother with that one. "_We will continue our search into the remaining soldiers recently released from prison._" She hung up the phone before he had a chance to.

"Another alibi?" Wang asked with another sigh of defeat.

"Security conference in Seattle while Hamilton was killed," Gibbs summed up. "You want to pull Holly out?"

"I think she's pulled herself out," Wang said, nodding through the glass. Sure enough, the former lieutenant colonel was rising from the table. She gave the mirror an almost imperceptible shake of her head before leaving the interrogation room.

"He didn't do it," she said sourly. Like Gibbs, her disgust was not at that fact, but the realization that they had gotten so close, only to find that they had followed the wrong trail.

"We know," Gibbs informed her. He didn't bother telling her about the alibi to Hamilton's murder than Ziva and the others had found. "My team is checking through recent releases from jail again."

She nodded, her jaw still set in anger as she turned away. "We're no damned closer to solving this case than we were eight years ago," she muttered darkly. There was nothing either Gibbs or Wang could say to console her; neither bothered to try.


	18. Chapter 18

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 18**

_A/N: Yesterday I took my last test of medical school! Well, assuming I passed, of course. It was a very exciting moment for me. Means I'm all that much closer to ending this four-year-long purgatory and getting on with my life._

_But I digress. Back to the story._

* * *

Saturday morning was clear and breezy; perfect weather for sailing, but Gibbs wasn't feeling up for it that day. He couldn't remember the last time he had taken a day off while in the middle of a case, or even if it had ever happened. He reached for his phone at least half a dozen times that morning, meaning to call Sonja Gracy to cancel, but put it down each time before he could hit 'send'. He doubted he would be good company that morning, but he just couldn't bring himself to back down. Still brooding about the fruitless interrogation the day before and all the work he could be getting done, he headed out for the marina.

Gracy and her children were already there when he arrived, despite the fact that he arrived ten minutes prior to their scheduled meeting time. He raised his eyebrows at that as he approached. Seeming to know what he was thinking, Gracy just shrugged. "The kids were excited and ready to go," she said as an explanation.

"There are lifejackets for us on the boat," Gibbs said as they headed down toward the docks. "But there aren't any Maddie and Nate's sizes. They'll have them at the marina office."

"No need," Gracy said, holding up her arm. He hadn't noticed the two children's sized lifejackets that she had been carrying until then. "We went boating quite a bit in Hawaii. Maddie informed me last night that the lifejackets made the move as well. Amazing how we can manage to get two kids' lifejackets from Hawaii to DC, but somehow a couple of frying pans and a blender didn't quite make it. And don't worry, I didn't forget lunch. Or this." She pulled out a thermos from her large bag and grinned. She really had thought about everything. Even the coffee.

The kids didn't complain about the lifejackets, a fact Gibbs commented on as they were underway. "They've gotten plenty of boating safety lectures from their uncle," Gracy explained. "Mark, my younger brother, is a lieutenant in the Coast Guard reserve. He's a DEA agent down in Miami in his real life and spends a lot of time on the water for that job, too." She continued to chat easily about her family her childhood, and Gibbs couldn't help but notice how relaxed she seemed out on the water, sipping her coffee and watching her children have a good time. In the three months that they had worked together, she had never looked so calm. It wasn't long before he felt himself starting to relax as well, the stress of the case seeming to ebb away.

"Agent Gibbs?" Nate asked, his head tilted in an expression of curiosity. "Is this the boat we worked on before?" While Gracy was in the ICU recovering from an episode of hypothermia years before, Maddie and Nate had stayed with Gibbs for the night.

The NCIS agent chuckled. This boat was quite a bit larger than his basement, and that boat obviously hadn't had a mast for a sail. "No," he said simply. "This belongs to a friend of mine."

"What happened to that boat?"

"It's a secret."

"How'd you get it out of the basement?"

He grinned. "It's a secret," he repeated. He heard Gracy chuckle at the explanation from her position beside him. "You want to steer?" he asked, gesturing toward the wheel in his hands. Nate's eyes widened.

"It's just like Uncle Mark's boat," Gracy said encouragingly. "And he let you man the wheel. He even gave Michi a try, and she's only four."

"Yeah, but I did it all by myself, and he had to help her," Nate replied indignantly. "Okay. What should I do?" Gibbs positioned the boy at the wheel and pointed out the compass, giving him a direction to stick to.

"What happens if I don't?" Nate asked seriously.

"Then we'll have to call the Coast Guard to come rescue us." Nate nodded gravely and gave the compass his full attention.

Gibbs accepted a cup of coffee from Gracy as he joined her on the low bench, where they watched as Nate made minute adjustments to keep them on course. "Not bad, Nate," Gibbs commented. "Navy might be in your future."

Gracy chuckled at the words. "I can see five generations of Gracy men rolling over in their graves at the thought." Five generations of Gracy men, all of whom proudly wore Army uniforms. Four of them died in them. None of the five had lived long enough to see the birth of their first grandchild. Although she didn't believe in fate or destiny, Gracy couldn't help but look at her son and hope there wouldn't be any wars in twenty to thirty years. Gracy men didn't seem to have much luck on the battlefield. "So, where are we heading, anyway?" Gracy asked to distract herself from the sudden morbid thought. Gibbs gave another grin.

"It's a secret," he repeated. She just chuckled and shook her head slightly, but seemed to accept the explanation. Days that she could have completely off, without needing to plan or do anything, were hard to come by, and she was bound and determined to enjoy this one.

---

While Gibbs and the Gracy family was out on the water, Hollis Mann was sitting in a conference room a stone's throw away from her old office at CID, staring intently at the pictures of four female Army officers on the white board. There was something she was missing about them, she could feel it, but it wasn't anything she could put her finger on. A captain, second lieutenant, first lieutenant, captain. Redhead, brunette, blond, brunette. Nurse, quartermaster, musician, veterinarian. Twenty-seven, twenty-three, thirty, thirty. All unmarried, all found dead with their boyfriends. All killed by a violent twist of the neck after their boyfriends had been shot in the head. All currently living in the DC area, none of them raised there. All graduates of ROTC programs.

_All killed by a violent twist of the neck..._ The words rang through Mann's mind, accompanied by the memory of the first time she had seen Dr. Sonja Gracy. _"I'm sorry to interrupt, Doctor, but I had a question about the Hamilton autopsy."_

_"Hamilton?"_

_"Lt. Amanda Hamilton, the quartermaster with the broken neck."_

_"Oh! Right. Sorry. It's been a busy week, and to make matters worse, both of my kids are sick and my husband is completely useless in that department. He seems to think that since I have the medical degree, I can cure anything." She rolled her eyes before turning to her assistant. "Let's take a break, Sergeant. This guy is going to be just as dead in another half hour."_

_"Yes, ma'am." Gracy lifted her clear plastic face shield and shrugged out of her blue autopsy gown._

_"I don't think we've been properly introduced," the pathologist said and she removed her gloves with a resolute snapping sound. "Captain Sonja Gracy, forensic pathology fellow."_

_"Colonel Hollis Mann, CID." Mann offered her hand, but Gracy chuckled and shook her head slightly._

_"Never shake hands with a pathologist, Colonel. Or a proctologist." She grinned before walking over to the sink. "You said you had a question about the Hamilton case."_

_"You mentioned some bruising around the lieutenant's neck in your report."_

_"Hold on, let me pull up the complete dictation. I do a lot of autopsies, ma'am. I don't want to accidentally get them confused." She walked over to a computer and logged on before bringing up a lengthy document and scanning it quickly. "Yeah, there was some bruising along the mandibular portion of her jaw and her posterior neck."_

_"Meaning?"_

_Gracy gave an apologetic smile. "Her lower jaw and the back of her neck. Considering how she was killed, that's not surprising. That would be consistent with the placement of the hands in order to snap the neck. Was there anything else you needed, ma'am?"_

_"No, that was all," Mann said thoughtfully. "I'll give you a call if I think of any other questions."_

_The pathologist nodded. "Sorry I couldn't be more of a help."_

Mann blinked, remembering the nagging feeling she had had then that the bruising was somehow significant. She frowned as she began searching through the folders Wang had neatly arranged in a portable filing cabinet in the corner of the room. She grabbed the four she was looking for and spread them out in front of her. Each autopsy report, the portions she was able to understand amidst the heavy medical jargon, mentioned that same bruising, but she still couldn't figure out what was bothering her about it. With a determined air, she picked up her phone and dialed.

---

They had arrived at a small island—likely part of some national or state park, knowing how much that part of the country liked those—a little before noon. After swimming in the roped-off recreation area for a short time with the kids, Gracy declared that she had had enough of the cold water—"It's not as bad as Norfolk in January, but I still prefer Hawaii or southern Florida anytime,"—and got lunch ready, which consisted of fried chicken and an assortment of various salads from the deli.

"Any progress on the case?" Gracy asked as she set aside a chicken bone and glanced into the container, contemplating another.

"You're not following it?" Gibbs asked, mildly surprised. She laughed slightly and shook her head.

"I do between five and fifteen autopsies a week, Gibbs," she said. "Which includes all of the reports and documentation. I also give expert opinions, do depositions, peer-review journal articles prior to publication, and all of the administrative crap that comes with being a deputy director of a national institute. I swear, I do more paperwork now as _deputy_ director of forensic pathology here than I did as the director at Tripler. I think Colonel Slide is passing along some of his stuff to me to see if I'll notice. Makes me wish I had a deputy back in Hawaii." She decided against another piece of chicken and grabbed one of the Little Debbie cakes Maddie had insisted on instead. "There aren't enough hours in a day for me to follow investigations of each of my cases as well."

He nodded as he filled her in on Agent Wang's theories and explained how they had gotten their hopes up about Sergeant Emerson, only to have discovered that he couldn't have done it. He asked her about the experiments Dr. Lester had mentioned.

"Oh, at the Body Farm?"

"Body Farm?"

She nodded. "The University of Tennessee's anthropology department has essentially a large-scale laboratory for investigating how various conditions affect decomposition. It has an official name, but everyone just calls it the Body Farm. I spent some time out there during my fellowship and co-authored a publication with an entomologist—someone who studies bugs—about the effects of stab wounds on larvae development and staging in order to better pinpoint time since death of stabbing victims."

"What would they have to do with neck fractures?"

"They have a good number of donated corpses to experiment on, and pathologists and anthropologists from all over the country—well, the world, actually—will contact them with questions about bone conditions or decomposition, and if they haven't already done a similar experiment, they'll design one. If I were to design this one, I'd get two ROTC cadets, or midshipmen, I guess—one right-handed and one left—who aren't squeamish about touching dead bodies, give them a crash course on breaking necks, and have each break one from the front and one from the back, and then study the bones and look for any differences based on the position of the assailant. I don't know how they'll design it, though. Either way, we should hear something by Monday." She seemed to think about that for a minute as she calculated days in her head. "Well, maybe Tuesday. Getting bones clean enough to study isn't always a quick and easy task." He nodded, not bothering to hide his disappointment that things couldn't happen faster. Well, there was nothing that they could do about it now.

They packed up everything they had brought and loaded it back onto the boat and set sail back for the mainland, with Gracy at the helm and Gibbs standing behind her, his arms loosely around her, his hands also on the large wooden wheel. "Gibbs, I've been sailing since I was younger than Nate," she said with a laugh. "I think I know what I'm doing."

"I know," he replied with a grin. She shook her head slightly and chuckled, but didn't move away. She had forgotten how nice it felt to have a man's arms around her, even with the bulk of the lifejackets between them.

And then his phone rang, and the moment was ruined. "Gibbs," he barked into the slim device. He listened for a minute, giving short "yeah"s and "um-hmm"s, before he said, "Just a minute." He held out the phone. "It's for you."

She snorted. "Right. Funny, Gibbs."

"I'm serious." She frowned and accepted the phone, handing over the wheel to step away.

"This is Major Gracy," she said, instantly all-business.

"_Sorry to interrupt your sail, Doctor, but I have a question for you._" It took Gracy a minute before she placed the voice of the former CID agent.

"Okay, Colonel. Maybe I'll be able to answer it."

"_It's about the bruising on the victims' necks._"

She sighed and shook her head slightly. "Colonel, I've done literally thousands of autopsies since Macintosh and Hamilton, and more than half a dozen since Rodriguez. I remember there was bruising, but I'm not exactly in a position where I can look up any of the specifics."

There was a pause, and then, "_Do you think it's something you can check when you get in?_"

"Just how urgent is this?" Gracy asked, already feeling her weekend slipping away. This was one of the things she had forgotten about her short time as an investigator but was quickly coming back to her, and one of the things she didn't miss.

"_I think it might be significant._"

She sighed again, a litany of excuses coming to mind about why she wouldn't be able to get to it until Monday. She wasn't working. She didn't have a nanny yet to watch the kids. The victims weren't going to be any more dead in a couple of days. She doubted it was anything that would change the outcome of the case. Still, she bit back a groan as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Tomorrow, Colonel," she heard herself saying. "I'll go in tomorrow and have another look."

So much for the easy life of a forensic pathologist.


	19. Chapter 19

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 19**

* * *

Tony DiNozzo woke to the sound of rain hitting the window of Ziva David's bedroom and smiled slightly as he rolled over in bed. "It's raining," he announced matter-of-factly.

"I can still run in the rain, Tony," Ziva murmured in reply, her eyes still closed. If it were a weekday, he'd have no doubt that that's what she'd do, but over the last couple of years, he had managed to convince her of the need to enjoy a rainy weekend morning every once in awhile. And by 'enjoy', he meant activities that didn't involve getting out of bed. Sometimes that was sleep, sometimes it was something else entirely.

This morning it looked like it was going to be sleep, as she promptly rolled over in bed, taking the covers with her. DiNozzo gave a half-hearted tug in attempt to get some of them back, but gave up the effort when she muttered, "I would be careful if I were you. You know there is a gun under my pillow."

"I need to stop making a habit of sleeping with trained assassins," DiNozzo said to himself.

"I do not think one constitutes a habit, Tony."

"One that you know of."

She snorted, not rising to the bait. "You keep forgetting that I was a spy. If you were having sex with anyone else, I would know."

"You underestimate me."

"You are not as sneaky and you think you are. Now be quiet. If I am not running this morning, I want to sleep." She loosened her grip on the blankets as a conciliatory gesture.

"Ziva?" DiNozzo asked a few minutes later.

"I cannot sleep and talk at the same time, Tony."

"Actually, you can. I've heard it a number of times. Don't know what you were saying, though, on account of it being in foreign languages."

She sighed. "What is it?"

"The language you were speaking?"

"What you were going to ask me."

"Oh. When is your lease up?"

She had to think about that for a minute. "Two months. Why?"

"Mine's up in three."

"So?"

"Are you being intentionally dense so I'll spell it out for you?"

There was a small smile on her face as she rolled back over to face him. "Maybe," she admitted.

"Do you want to start looking for a new place? Together, I mean?"

Part of her wanted to give an enthusiastic 'yes' and jump out of bed and start an apartment search immediately, but a larger part of her was much more cautious. They practically lived together as it was; it was a rare occasion when they slept alone in their separate apartments, and sharing rent on one place would be cheaper than continuing to pay for two. Still, it was a nice security blanket, to know that her apartment was hers, and if need be, she had a place where she could be away from Tony for even a few hours before seeing him at work again the next morning.

So she sighed. "I do not know," she admitted. "You still have not heard if Vance is going to give you your own team. We could be leaving at any point." They had already decided that a move, no matter where in the world it would be, she would be going with him. There was no shortage of international agencies who would accept her if she asked for a position.

He sighed as well, dropping his head to rest his forehead against hers. "That could be tomorrow, or next month, or years from now," he said. "I'm tired of putting everything on hold for something that might not happen." It was ironic how much he found himself wanting this, considering how much he fought being removed from Gibbs' team every time that came up in the past. A relationship with the same woman for more than two years, ready for a promotion and being his own boss—maybe he was finally growing up.

She opened her mouth to reply, but the ringing of a cell phone distracted her. "David," she answered without breaking eye contact.

"_Not quite who I was expecting, but I guess that works_." Ziva glanced down at the phone in her hand to realize that it was Tony's. "_Get DiNozzo and get to CID._"

"We are not on call this weekend, Gibbs."

"_I know that._" Judging by the annoyance in her boss' voice, he was just about as pleased to be called in as she was. "_Wang seems to think we've made a break in the case_."

"Did Abby get a match on the fingerprints?" she asked.

"_I don't know. He wouldn't say. Just said he needed to see us ASAP._" He hung up without saying anything further.

"Next weekend," Ziva declared decisively as she pulled back the covers and got out of bed.

"Next weekend?" DiNozzo echoed.

"We will look for an apartment next weekend."

---

"Chris got a match on the bootprints," CID Special Agent Wang said excitedly as the last of the NCIS agents filed into the conference room. The entire CID team looked as if they had been there for hours already; maybe they had.

"A bootprint." DiNozzo said flatly. "You called us in on a Sunday when we're not on call about a bootprint. What is it? One that's been issued to thousands of soldiers on every military base in the world?"

"No," Wang replied, not about to let a disgruntled NCIS agent damper his excitement. "It's a Danner Fort Lewis 200g black boot."

They all looked at him, waiting for him to explain, but nothing else came. "So?" DiNozzo finally asked.

"So, Danner boots aren't sold in every military base in the world," Wang said. "Most models have one component that was made overseas, and the DoD makes it a policy to only issue boots that were entirely made in the USA. Danner is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. There are only a few base clothing and supply stores in the country that carry Danner boots, and they're all in the Northwest."

"Rodriguez had Danner boots," Mann said, suddenly remembering. Wang nodded.

"The TFX Rough Out tan boot," Wang confirmed with a nod. "She went to veterinary school at Washington State University and did one of her active duty training months at Ft. Lewis, in Tacoma, Washington. That's the largest of the bases that carry Danner boots. McChord Air Force Base also sells them, as does Fairchild Air Force Base and a few of the other smaller bases and posts in the area."

"So for our killer to have gotten Danner boots, he would have had to have gone through one of those bases at some point," Gibbs said before shaking his head. "That's still hundreds of thousands of soldiers."

"Fort Lewis alone has thirty thousand soldiers stationed there at a time," Mann confirmed, her good mood from a moment ago slipping away. "We can't search the records of everyone ever stationed there. It would take years."

"This particular model of boot was introduced in 2000," Wang said. "What about doing a search for everyone who had been stationed in Washington or Oregon after 2000, prior to being stationed in the greater DC area?" Wang suggested. "That's possible, right?"

"Well, yes—" McGee began.

"Yes or no, Agent McGee. That's all I'm interested in hearing."

"It's possible," McGee said. "But just because he's in DC now doesn't mean he was ever stationed here. He could have been born here and moved back home after leaving the Army, he could have gotten a job with the federal government, or he could have just decided to relocate here for no other reason."

Wang frowned at the pessimism before rising from his chair and adding "Stationed in NW after 2000" to the white board. "This narrows it down," he stubbornly insisted.

"Yeah, from hundreds of thousands of soldiers to tens of thousands," DiNozzo said dryly.

"We can see if the bases have records of who bought what boots," McGee suggested suddenly.

"You're only encouraging him," DiNozzo scolded.

"No. That's good," Wang said eagerly, making DiNozzo sigh in exasperation and shake his head. "And check with Danner, too, in case he bought them directly from them."

"And don't forget to check every surplus store and seller of second-hand boots," DiNozzo added sarcastically.

"It's something, Tony. It's better than sitting around complaining," McGee finally shot back.

"You're right, Probie. Chasing down pointless leads is something. It's fun, too," DiNozzo said, sarcasm still in full force. Gibbs had finally had enough.

"Unless you can think of something else, DiNozzo, you're with McGee. Ziva, go back to NCIS and check with Abby, see if she has anything else from the fingerprints." Gibbs rose from the table and headed for the door.

"Where are you going, Gibbs?" Wang asked.

"Home, Agent Wang. DiNozzo's right; this is pointless."

---

Gibbs was in his kitchen making a fresh pot of coffee when his front door opened suddenly. "Oh," Major Sonja Gracy said in surprise. "I thought you'd be in the basement."

"Needed a refill," he said, pointing at the coffee maker. "You're in uniform today."

"Well, I figured if I was going to be going to the office on a Sunday on the whim of your ex-girlfriend, I might as well be there officially." She tossed her beret, followed by her uniform jacket, on the table. "Sorry. That was unnecessarily bitchy." He wordlessly handed her a bottle of beer from the fridge. "Thanks."

"The kids?"

"One of Maddie's classmates lives down the street. She has a brother Nate's age. I arranged a play date for them today, which means I'm at the mercy of a suburban soccer mom until she decides to call in the favor. I said I probably won't be done before five, which means I have a couple more hours to be pissed off before picking them up." She took a long pull from the bottle, then made a face. "God, Gibbs, you give someone with German blood a cheap beer?"

"There's bourbon in the basement."

"I'll stick with the cheap beer, thanks." She took another drink. "So Maddie has it in her head that she should start taking piano lessons. I'm trying to figure out where she's going to find the time to practice and have her lessons, given that there are a finite number of hours in a day, but she keeps saying that she _needs_ to learn how to play the piano. I think I should wait this one out for awhile, and if she's still talking about it in a few months, maybe I'll try to work something out."

He remembered a tape of a piano recital sent to him while he was deployed, but quickly pushed that thought aside. "Ziva plays the piano, always bugging DiNozzo about lessons. I'm sure she'd like having someone to teach."

She shook her head. "I know first-hand how hard your agents work, Gibbs. There's no way I'm asking one of them to give up one of their few free hours in a week."

He smiled slightly. "Find anything interesting at work?"

Another shake of the head. "I spent a few hours going over all four autopsy reports in detail, hoping that something would jump out at me, but just as I remembered, there didn't seem to be anything remarkable about the bruises around their necks. They're indistinct, perimortem, and right where you'd expect them to be for someone to grab them and twist their necks until they broke. I had taken swabs of the bruises, just to be thorough, I guess, and ran it through the GC-MS. Both Macintosh and Hamilton had cotton fibers from their tee-shirts, starch from their BDU jackets—I was impressed with that, actually, as I never starched my BDUs—almost undetectable traces of aluminum from their dogtags, and latex powder, which I'm assuming was from the killer's gloves. Rodriguez didn't have the latex powder. Or the starch. You can't starch ACUs."

"The CID agent said the prints on the CACs were consistent with synthetic gloves. He said probably nitrile."

She nodded. "Makes sense. More and more places are switching to non-latex gloves because of allergies and contact dermatitis. All of the DoD's MTFs now use non-latex gloves."

"MTF?"

"Medical treatment facility."

He frowned; there was something about her words that he couldn't quite put his finger on. "What about Olafsen? Any latex powder?"

Gracy shrugged. "Far as I can tell, Dr. Gordon didn't check."

"Dr. Gordon?"

"The Air Force pathologist who did the autopsy." He nodded; he kept forgetting that she hadn't done that one.

"So at some point between 2005 and now, our killer switched from latex to non-latex gloves."

"It sure looks that way," Gracy agreed.

Gibbs felt like this was all belonging to a giant jigsaw puzzle, and he couldn't quite find a corner piece. _"The first victim was a nurse." "Captain Irene Macintosh, twenty-seven years old, nurse in the physical medicine and rehabilitation unit at Walter Reed." "All of the DoD's MTFs now use non-latex gloves."_ "When did the DoD switch to non-latex gloves?"

She looked bewildered at the question. "I honestly have no idea, Gibbs."

"Was it after 2005?"

She shrugged. "Probably, but don't quote me on that. I've used nitrile gloves since medical school. I developed contact dermatitis from latex gloves after gross anatomy." She frowned, following his line of thought. "Are you thinking the killer might work at one of the MTFs?"

"I don't know. How many doctors do you think are capable of breaking someone's neck?"

She actually smiled at the thought. "I'm sure a few orthopods have done it," she joked, "just to see if they could. It doesn't have to be an employee, thought. It could also be a long-term patient. Macintosh was a PM&R nurse, which is where the amputees are treated and get their follow-up. Many of them keep coming back for years for aches and pains and to get fitted with the newest and best prosthetics."

"How hard is it to take a pair of gloves out of the hospital?"

"Are you kidding?" she scoffed. She gestured down at her pants. "We have endless pockets in these uniforms. I bet I could stick an entire box of gloves in the big cargo pockets. And as long as you look like you know what you're supposed to be doing, you could walk out with a whole carton of glove boxes and nobody would give you a second glance."

Gibbs was about to pull out his phone to tell DiNozzo to check with Walter Reed's registry of amputees when the front door opened unexpectedly for the second time that afternoon. Hollis Mann stopped just inside the doorway at the sight of Gibbs standing by the kitchen counter and Gracy seated at the kitchen table in half a uniform, her beret and ACU jacket on the table and a beer in her hand. "Oh," she finally said. "I thought you'd be in the basement."

"I have an entire house. I'm not always in the basement."

Gracy smiled slightly at his defensive words as she glanced at her watch. "I should probably go rescue the kids from the Joneses. Or rescue the Joneses from my kids, whatever." She finished the beer as she stood and handed Gibbs the empty bottle. "I trust you'll fill Colonel Mann in on what I found?"

"Sure," he said. She nodded and stepped toward the door, but his outstretched hand stopped her. "Beret and jacket."

"Ah, thanks." She grabbed the loose pieces of her uniform, then leaned over and gave Gibbs a lingering kiss. If questioned about it later, she'd never admit that her first kiss in two and a half years was prompted by annoyance with Mann. "Let me know if you find anything interesting." She smiled thinly at Mann before leaving the house.

The retired lieutenant colonel waited until she heard the sound of Gracy's car starting before she commented, "I don't think she likes me much."

Gibbs chuckled at her words as he headed toward the basement stairs, a mug full of fresh Hawaiian coffee in hand. "Don't blame that one on me, Holly. You're the one who made her deal with the suburban soccer mom."

She didn't even bother asking what that was supposed to mean.


	20. Chapter 20

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 20**

* * *

Dr. Sonja Gracy was just removing the last of her autopsy garb when the morgue doors opened. "There's a visitor for you, ma'am. He says he's from NCIS."

Thinking she knew who it was, Gracy smiled slightly before saying, "Send him in." To her surprise, it wasn't Gibbs who walked through the doors. "DiNozzo. This is a surprise."

"I was out for a drive and saw your sign, so I decided to stop by." She snorted as she walked over to the sink to wash her hands. "Actually, Gibbs told us about what you said about amputees. We got a list of names of soldiers who lost limbs prior to 2003 from the rehab center at Walter Reed. I was able to narrow it down slightly by only including combat soldiers, which was, unfortunately, most of them."

"No surprise there," Gracy commented.

"Right. Unfortunately, I don't understand the medical jargon, and Ducky's in the hospital—"

"What?" Gracy interrupted, her full attention now on the NCIS agent. "What happened? Is he okay?"

"What? Oh, no. It wasn't Ducky. Apparently, his mother fell and broke her hip." Gracy grimaced; she knew the statistics, and most elderly women with broken hips never fully recover. "So I decided to come by and ask if you could translate."

"And you drew the short straw to come venture over to the land of the dead?"

He grinned. "Actually, I needed to get away for a bit."

"Trouble in paradise?" she asked innocently.

"If you're referring to Ziva, everything's going well in that department. We're going to be moving in together."

"That should save on rent," she said with a straight face before grinning. "Congrats. When?"

"Not sure yet," he admitted. "I just got her to agree to look at apartments."

"Well, good for you. Girls don't wait around for the bad boys forever."

"I don't know if I'd classify myself as a 'bad boy'."

"Would you say that you're a good one?"

"Good point."

She grinned before getting back to the point. "Rehab isn't exactly my area of expertise, but I know the anatomy pretty well. Just let me finish up a few things here, then we can go to my office."

DiNozzo nodded and glanced around, mentally comparing this autopsy suite to the one at NCIS. This one seemed more high-tech, but both had the same cold, sterile feeling to them. "What'd this guy die of?" he asked, nodding toward the stainless steel table.

"Car accident. Don't drink and drive."

"He was drunk?"

She nodded. "We ran his blood alcohol. It was .32. In highly technical medical terms, he was blotto." She smiled slightly, then shook her head sadly. "Just got back from Afghanistan and over-did the celebration. I wish I could say he was the first I've seen in that situation." She glanced up and then over to her autopsy assistant, a tall, thin man in dark scrubs who reminded DiNozzo vaguely of Jimmy Palmer. "Sergeant Palmer, do you mind closing up? And then get the samples over to make slides, standard set. I don't need anything special for him. COD is pretty obvious."

"Yes, ma'am," the sergeant replied.

"You have your own autopsy gremlin?" DiNozzo asked in wonder. "And his name is Palmer?"

"When I got the new autopsy assistant catalog, I flipped to 'M' for 'military'. There were only two choices, the Mr. Palmer and the Mr. Sanders. Unfortunately, the Mr. Sanders was out of stock."

"Seriously?"

"No," she replied, laughing as she shook her head slightly. "It's just a coincidence."

"According to Gibbs, there's no such thing in coincidence."

"Then it's just a common last name. Come on, my office is this way." She grabbed a long white lab coat as they exited the autopsy suite and headed down the corridor.

There wasn't much exciting about the office space; there were probably a hundred offices in the building that were identical. There was a full-sized bookshelf along one wall, filled with volumes on forensics and anatomy and texts with names such as _Robbins' Pathological Basis of Disease_ and _Atlas of Histology_. Gracy also had her medical degree and license displayed, as well as official-looking certificates of rank, starting with one for a 2LT Sonja A. Herzlich. Along another wall were pictures of people in uniform and memorabilia from deployment: a small pennant for the 10th CSH at Ibn Sina, a picture of Gracy and an assortment of other physicians posing with President Obama during his one visit to Iraq, and a wooden sign that said "Morgue: MAJ Sonja Gracy, MD, Forensic Pathology" and what DiNozzo assumed to be the same thing underneath in Arabic.

"Can you hand me that volume on prosthetics?" Gracy asked, gesturing toward the bookshelf as she pulled a water bottle from the small refrigerator behind her desk and took a long drink. DiNozzo found the one she was referring to and handed it over before taking a seat on the other side of her desk. "Now, unlike Ducky, I don't do psychological autopsies, but killing someone with bare hands could be symbolic of a hand injury. Maybe we should start there. It'll also give us a good place to start ruling people out—not all prosthetic hands can handle breaking a neck."

"Good idea," DiNozzo said, checking the list. "The first on here is a Specialist Tyrone Sykes, who had an amputation of the right distal ulna and radius with an anastomosis of the, uh—." He stopped at the unfamiliar medical word and looked up apologetically. "This is why I needed help."

"Here, let me," Gracy said with a smile, taking the list from him. She found the entry he was looking at. "Oh. That just refers to the nerve salvage they did. Now with the prosthetic they have listed here..." Her voice trailed off as she flipped through the text until she found the right entry. She shook her head. "Not Sykes. Not with that prosthesis. No offense, DiNozzo, but I think I might get through this faster alone."

He grinned, having suspected that that would be the case, and began amusing himself by studying his surroundings. The various certificates and commendations held no interest to him, so he found himself looking over the pictures, a collection which spanned Gracy's Army career, judging by the changes in the uniforms. "This your husband?"

She glanced up briefly, not needing to closely examine the picture he was pointing at. She had been tired and dirty, the dark camouflage of her old Battle Dress Uniform stained with sweat and dirt after a twelve mile forced road march—full uniform and boots and thirty-five pound pack through the Texas desert in the August heat to complete her Expert Field Medical Badge. Scott had taken a few days of leave to meet up with her after it was done, and was there when she was awarded the badge, his uniform still clean and pressed, his boots still shined. In the picture, his patrol cap was on backwards, and he had taken hers off completely to kiss her. She couldn't remember who had snapped the picture of one of the few times they had broken decorum while both in uniform, but she had had that picture displayed in every office she had occupied, including a dimly-lit corner of a Baghdad morgue. "Yeah. That was after I earned my Expert Field Medical Badge. Scott and Maddie came out to Texas and we all drove back to DC."

"And Nate?"

"At that point, Nate was the vague of idea of 'maybe someday we'll have another kid.'" She smiled slightly before returning to the list, marking X's next to the ones she didn't think could have done it, and jotting down notes such as "_if left-handed, could indicate right-hand amputation_."

"I didn't know you knew Macintosh," DiNozzo said suddenly. This time, she did crane her neck to see which picture he was looking at, a frown on her face.

"I didn't," she replied.

"This isn't her?" He was pointing at one of Gracy and a tall, slender redhead. Both were kneeling on a tarp, partially reassembled M-16s in their hands, their patrol caps at their knees to collect the small pieces of the rifles.

She laughed. "That's Shaena O'Leary, my 'battle buddy' from Officer Basic Course," she informed him. "Her maiden name was Grady, so we were right next to each other alphabetically." They had been racing to see who could dissemble and reassemble an M-16 fastest. Gracy, having been taught that particular skill by Scott before arriving at OBC, had been several steps ahead of her fellow medical student. "Everyone seems to think that all redheads look alike," she teased. "With the alliteration of our first names and our similar-sounding last names, people got us confused or asked if we were twins." To be fair, they did bear a certain resemblance: they had the same tall, athletic builds from years of competitive swimming, the same freckles, and they both had red hair, although Shaena's had been curly and bright, whereas Sonja's was straight and more of an auburn.

"Maybe it's just the hair, then, but she looks a lot like Macintosh," DiNozzo mused. Gracy shrugged.

"I guess, but it's not her. Shaena's alive and well. She left the Army a couple of years ago and is now an associate professor of psychiatry over at Georgetown. She specializes in schizophrenia treatment and research." Psychiatry had always been Shaena's career goal, even in that summer between her first and second years of medical school. She had confided in Gracy during one of their evening boot-polishing sessions about an older brother who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia during his first year of medical school, and had seen first-hand the descent of the family's golden child to a paranoid, compulsive man who thought the government was inserting thoughts into his head and would often go off his medications because he thought it was a government trick to keep him from discovering their treachery. Before they had realized that his rants were actually a schizophrenic break, the family had thought that he was joking: of course the government is putting thoughts into your head, they said. As an ROTC cadet and later a second lieutenant in the Health Professions Scholarship Program--the same program that supported Shaena Grady and Sonja Gracy through medical school--that's what the Army was supposed to do. It hadn't been until he ran off in the middle of the night before one of his exams and disappeared for two weeks that they realized that he hadn't been joking. That what was had influenced her decision to go to medical school in the first place.

About half an hour later, Gracy handed the list back to DiNozzo. "I hope this helps," she said. "I put X's next to the ones who couldn't have done it, based on the injuries or prosthetics and jotted some notes about some of the others. Gibbs told me about Wang's theory about the guy having been stationed in the northwest. Maybe you can narrow it down further with that."

"Yeah," DiNozzo said with a sarcastic snort. "No offense to the agency you briefly worked for, but I think Special Agent Wang has gone off the deep end with this. He's finding every tiny piece of evidence and making these grand conclusions from it. But I could be wrong. Maybe when we catch this guy we'll realize that he really is a left-handed former combat soldier who had been spurned by a female officer sometime after being stationed at Ft. Lewis and before being locked up for solicitation or something. Anyway, thanks. Good luck with your drunk driver."

"Thanks," she replied with a slight smile as DiNozzo ducked out of her office. With a thoughtful frown, she rose from her chair to stand where the NCIS agent had just been, her eyes locked on the bright green eyes of a smiling young medical student in Battle Dress Uniform, loose tendrils of red hair stuck to her neck with sweat and a partially assembled assault rifle in her hands. She realized with a start that DiNozzo had been right.

Shaena O'Leary and Irene Macintosh bore an uncanny resemblance to each other.


	21. Chapter 21

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 21**

* * *

"I have something for you." Agent Gibbs glanced up from his desk in surprise at the slightly breathless voice to see Sonja Gracy approaching.

"I still haven't made it through the first ten pounds of coffee you gave me," he joked.

"No," she said, waving the comment aside, a hint of annoyance in her voice. "About the case. It was DiNozzo who pointed it out, actually."

"We're still running the names from the amputee list," the special agent in question chimed in from his desk.

"No, not those. Well, it could be those. I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong."

"Breathe, Gracy," Gibbs commanded. "Then speak."

"Second Lieutenant Devlin Grady," Gracy said. "He was a medical student on an Army scholarship until 1995, when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His younger sister, retired Major Shaena O'Leary, was my battle buddy at Officer Basic. She's a dead ringer for Macintosh."

"You saying that Grady killed Macintosh because he thought she was his sister?" Gracy could tell by Gibbs' tone that he didn't believe it.

"I'm saying a schizophrenic might not be able to tell the difference," she said.

"I will run the name," Ziva David chimed in from her desk.

"What about the combat experience?" McGee asked with a frown. Gracy shrugged.

"He was an ROTC cadet before medical school. Maybe he learned the technique then. I don't know."

"And the boots," McGee continued. "Wang said that the killer's boots weren't even made until five years after Grady left the Army."

"We've been over this, McTechnicality," DiNozzo said. "You don't have to be on a particular base to get a pair of boots. You don't even have to be in the military. And we don't know that those bootprints belonged to the killer."

"It is not Grady," Ziva interjected. "He was hit by a train in Philadelphia in 2002. Witnesses believe it was suicide."

"Damn," Gracy muttered. "I was so sure that that explained it. Well, I guess it's a good thing, really. Better than having to tell one of my best friends that her brother is a serial killer who thought he was killing her. Abby have any luck with the fingerprints?"

Gibbs shook his head. "She ran them through once with no leads. She's trying to clean up some of the smudges that she thinks might yield viable prints and trying again. And it wasn't a bad thought, Gracy. I'm glad you brought it up."

"Yeah," the pathologist muttered before forcing a smile. "I guess I should stick to the autopsies and leave the investigating to the experts, huh?"

"Have you heard anything from the Body Farm yet?"

"Not yet," she replied with a shake of her head. "Van Lester might have heard. I guess since my theory flopped and our killer is still out there, I should probably get back to work and follow up with him."

Gibbs nodded. "You know where to find us if you get anything or think of anything else."

"Thanks, Gibbs." She gave him another tight smile and wished DiNozzo luck with the amputee list before heading back for her car.

---

Sonja Gracy had spent more time in the Forensic Anthropology department in the last week than she had in the sum of her entire career prior, so she was able to find her way through the 'autopsy' suites to Dr. Van Lester's lab without any problems. "Van, please tell me you have something from the Body Farm. I just ran over to NCIS spouting wild theories about the case, and I need something to redeem myself with."

Dr. Van Lester glanced up at the breathless rant. "And good day to you, too, Major Gracy," he replied.

"Van, seriously."

He removed his gloves and handed her a folder. "Just arrived via overnight express this morning. I had a video conference with the Body Farm to go over it. Our conclusion: it's likely that the victims were killed from the front, not the back."

"Hooah," Gracy muttered, using the familiar military word to indicate excitement—or agreement, or just about anything—as she quickly scanned the summary page of the thick report. "I should send Dr. Bass a fruit basket or something."

"You have the budget for that?"

"You work for the federal government, Van. There's no limit to the money you can waste."

"I think a shipment of that coffee would be better received."

"Unfortunately, there _is_ a limit to that." She frowned as she tapped the edge of the folder against her palm. "The first victim was a rehab nurse. They're running names of amputees now to see if anyone fits. What's your take? Can someone with one arm break someone's neck?"

"Killed by a one-armed man? Didn't Harrison Ford already do that one?"

"Funny."

He seemed to think about the question. "I guess it would depend on the prosthesis," he finally said with a shrug. "I would call up Dr. Bass again and ask him to run an experiment, but I doubt he has a one-handed grad student to test that theory."

"Hmm. Okay. Hey, thanks for following up on that with the Body Farm. Mind if I steal your glory and pass that info along to the investigators?"

He waved her on. "Go ahead. Redeem yourself. While you're giving your acceptance speech for your meritorious service medal, though, don't forget to thank me."

"Yeah, sure. Except we don't give speeches when we accept medals," she replied with a smile as she waved good-bye and headed back to her office to make a phone call.

---

After Gracy had called Gibbs with the news of the anthropology report, the supervisory field agent made the mistake of calling Agent Wang, who insisted on calling another group meeting to discuss the results, something that could have been very easily—and much more quickly—over the phone. By the time he left CID and headed back to his house, it was nearing 2200.

"I feel like I'm seventeen again, only now instead of sneaking out of the house past two middle-aged college professors, I'm sneaking out past two nosy children." Gibbs glanced up to see an amused Sonja Gracy descending the stairs, clad in sandals, khakis, and what appeared to be the same tee-shirt Jasper had died in. "Actually, I guess I am still sneaking out past college professors, at least one--my mom's up until my new nanny arrives." She smiled slightly and stopped talking when she realized she was starting to babble.

"You snuck out of the house at seventeen?" he asked with a smile.

"No other way my parents would let me see Javier Putnam. He was twenty, wasn't going to college, and drove a motorcycle. My parents called him _ein schwerer Junge_—essentially, a bad influence."

He chuckled at the thought of a seventeen-year-old Sonja Herzlich sneaking around to see the quintessential bad boy. "I'm trying to picture you at seventeen."

"I was the tallest girl in my class, was about twenty pounds lighter than I am now, wore a swimsuit about sixteen hours a day, had hair down to here," she gestured vaguely around her waist, "thought I was better and smarter than anyone else, and was just waiting for the scholarship offers to come pouring in. And if anyone had told me then that in twenty years I'd be a major in the Army and sitting under an unfinished boat in a basement while my kids were asleep, I would have laughed."

"Well, while you're under there, you might as well make yourself useful." He handed her a sanding block and pointed at the underside of one of the beams. She grinned.

"Aye, aye, Gunny," she joked.

"You aren't trying to get me to start calling you 'ma'am', are you?"

"Oh, God, no. I get confused enough as it is when my sergeants call me that."

After watching to make sure she was sanding it correctly, he went back to previous task of bending the boards. "Your anthropology report today caused another marathon meeting at CID," he commented.

"Oh. Sorry about that. I was just eager to come back with something productive, after I made that scene about barking up the wrong tree earlier today. I guess I should have just waited until tomorrow."

"And risk the wrath of Agent Wang?"

She smiled thinly. "The wrath of Wang? Is that anything like _The Wrath of Khan_?" She looked up to see a blank expression on his face. "Oh, come on. DiNozzo would have been all over that."

"DiNozzo watches too many movies."

"True." She reached for a nearby coffee mug, then made a face after taking a drink. "That's not coffee."

"You have something against bourbon?"

"Just some bad experiences. The first people I knew at Georgetown were a couple of recent West Point grads I met at Officer Basic. One of the things about being a woman in the Army—especially if you're the only one around—is that you have to prove that you can play with the big boys, and in med school, that means matching them shot for shot. I can think of a few times I killed a few too many brain cells doing that, and bourbon was the poison of choice more than one of those times." She glanced up at the beam she was sitting under and sighed, setting aside the sanding block. She remembered her comment to Ducky during Captain Rodriguez's autopsy, about dating at thirty-six being different than dating at twenty, but being honest with herself, she knew she wasn't too good at it then, either. If it weren't for Scott Gracy's annoying persistence, she never would have gotten past the first impression of him as a conceited, self-absorbed jock. She hadn't been very good at making the first move then, and that hadn't changed, but someone was going to have to. "Gibbs, I didn't come here to work on your boat."

He opened his mouth to reply when they heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. It didn't take either of them very long to figure who it was. "_Scheisse_," Gracy swore darkly. "Does she have some sort of sensor that detects when I'm around?"

"You stay here," Gibbs replied. "I'll go talk to her." He got up and started toward the stairs, but didn't get far before Hollis Mann appeared in the basement door.

"Whatever happened to rule three, Jethro?" she asked, not giving Gracy a second glance. "We've been trying to get a hold of you for the last hour."

Gibbs pulled his phone out of his pocket and swore under his breath. "The damned thing's dead again."

"Then maybe it's time you learned how to use a charger. Everyone's gathered at CID. Abby got a hit on the fingerprints." She glanced down at Gracy again. "You're going to want to see this, too, Major. It's a good one."


	22. Chapter 22

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 22**

* * *

Special Agent Tony DiNozzo's eyebrows rose at the sight of who walked into the conference room at CID headquarters. Although Hollis Mann had left to inform Gibbs of the meeting, Gibbs beat her back. That was no surprise, considering the way the supervisory field agent drove. What was surprising was who followed closely behind Gibbs: Major Sonja Gracy, obviously off-duty in khakis and a tee-shirt, her auburn hair loose past her shoulders. As to why a casually-dressed medical examiner had arrived with his boss in the middle of the night, well, he figured there couldn't have been too many explanations to that one. He decided that that was a good thing; when Gracy had worked with the team more than two years before, she had devoted everything she had to the job with an intensity that had only been rivaled by Gibbs--and that was only because she still had children to go home to--but didn't seem to enjoy any of it. He didn't think he had even seen her smile in those three months. Now she seemed much more relaxed, with a light sense of humor, and if her presence here with Gibbs was any indication, was beginning to move on. He wondered if he was getting a glimpse at what Sonja Gracy had been like before her husband was killed.

"I heard we got a hit on the fingerprints," Gibbs said without preamble as he took a seat, forcing DiNozzo to return his attention to the briefing. Wang, clearly taken aback by the presence of the pathologist and Gibbs' manner, took a minute to answer.

"Why don't we wait for Colonel Mann to return?" he finally suggested.

"Colonel Mann seems to already know what's going on," Gibbs replied. "Why don't you fill Major Gracy and me in." The way he said it made it more of a command than a question.

Abby Sciuto didn't need any further prompting. "Gibbs, Gracy, I'd like you to meet Sergeant Russell Masters," she said, gesturing toward the display screen. "Sergeant Masters left his left thumbprint on the floor right next to the area that had been cleaned off. I'm guessing he used his hand to balance himself as he got up."

"And we're sure this is our guy?" Gibbs asked. "He's not with the construction crew?"

Abby shook her head definitively, her black pigtails swinging. "Nope," she declared. "At least, he doesn't have a construction permit, and everyone else who left fingerprints in that office does. So unless our construction manager hired only one person without a permit, who just happened to be a former Army soldier, this is our guy. It took me awhile to determine that, though, because of the way the thumbprint was smudged, which makes sense, when you thinking about it. I mean, have you ever tried to use your hand to help yourself up from a seated position and _not_ moved your hand? I tried it after I found the print, and—"

"Abby," Gibbs interrupted. "Is this really relevant?"

"Well, it is and it isn't, Gibbs," she replied. "Because of how much it was smudged, I was only able to get a partial print, so the odds of the print belonging to Masters is only a million to one, instead of like, a hundred billion to one, which a full match would be. A million to one still sounds pretty good, but that means that there are about three hundred people in the United States who could have left that print. In others words, it might not stand up in court, but I seriously doubt this guy will go to court."

Gibbs frowned at that last part, not knowing what to make of his scientist's words. Instead of asking her to explain, however, he asked no one in particular, "What do we know about Sergeant Masters?"

"He signed an early decision contract with the Army after his junior year of high school, Boss," McGee jumped in. "After graduating in 1996, he went through basic training and then onto Ft. Rucker for airborne training. Uh, spent a couple of years as a specialist with the 82nd Airborne before entering ranger training. Made it through the training and was stationed at Ft. Lewis as part of the 2nd Ranger Battalion."

"He was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in 2001 with his unit," one of the CID agents jumped in, "but according to his personnel jacket, he was instead transferred to WTB at Walter Reed. No record of why."

"WTB?"

"Warrior Transition Brigade," Gracy said, her first words since entering the room. "It's for injured and sick soldiers as they go through rehab and wait for decisions from the medical board regarding retention."

The CID agent gave a quick nod. "There's no record of any injury or hospitalization, though, just the notation of WTB until his medical discharge in late 2002. Dropped off the radar for awhile, then reappeared in a couple of arrest records over the years. No records of trials or incarceration."

"Psych unit," Gracy muttered, realization dawning. Maybe she hadn't been as far off as she had thought when she pointed the finger at Devlin Grady.

"Major?" Wang asked, confused.

"There's no record of injury because he didn't have one. There's no record of hospitalization because psych records are sealed in the military. There's no record of criminal trials because he never had one, and there's no record of incarceration because he was kept in psychiatric hospitals. Our killer isn't a hardened criminal with a vendetta against female Army officers. He's a paranoid schizophrenic with a fixation on female Army officers, or, rather, one female Army officer, and he can't figure out why she keeps coming back to life."

"So this all about Macintosh," Wang stated. "He must have met her while he was at Walter Reed."

Gracy shook her head. "Not Captain Macintosh. He was assigned an Army psychiatrist when he was admitted, a second or third year resident. In his case, I would be willing to bet my board-certification specialty pay--which is what I use to pay my kids' tuition--that he was assigned to Captain Shaena Grady."

---

Unlike former Sergeant First Class Thomas Emerson, Jr, there was little resemblance between the man who now sat in the CID interrogation room and a hardened Army soldier. The former Sergeant Russell Masters was also tall and lean, but unlike Emerson, his lack of girth appeared to be more from scrounging meals and surviving on the streets than any intention. His hair had grown long and shaggy, his clothes dirty and torn. He was in constant motion, his eyes never resting on anything for longer than a few seconds, his mouth always moving—sometimes audibly, sometimes not—in response to whatever he was hearing in his head. The only thing that gave this clearly mentally ill man away as someone who once had direction and purpose in life was the tattoo that was revealed through the tatters of his right sleeve: crossbones and a skull wearing a beret, from a time when only the Army's best-trained combat soldiers wore that particular headpiece, with the words "Rangers Lead The Way!" scripted beneath. It was hard to imagine that the man who sat before them now was once dedicated enough and strong enough to earn that tattoo.

The interrogation, run by CID Agent Wang, was anything but routine. Masters barely looked at the CID special agent and only occasionally answered his questions, often murmuring things such as, "You know I can't do that" and "Not now!", sometimes holding his hands over his ears in an attempt to block the voices that only he could hear. It wasn't until Wang had neatly arranged the official Department of the Army photographs of the four women Masters had killed that they got a reaction.

"Do you know who these women are?" Wang demanded. Masters glanced at the photos for seconds at a time, quickly looking away before looking back down, for several long minutes.

"Captain Grady, Captain Grady, Captain Grady, Captain Grady," he replied, his voice flat and robotic. "Always Captain Grady. Don't touch Captain Grady. Can't touch Captain Grady. Nobody can touch Captain Grady. She let him touch her. No!" The last word seemed to be directed at someone nobody else could see. "I won't hurt Captain Grady! I won't! Just trying to help, she said. My job to help, she said. Sometimes I think she worked with them. She was in on it. I could hear her laughing as they planned their evil plans. It's her fault. It's her fault. It's all her fault. It would be different now if she weren't here, if she weren't there. Life would be different if Captain Grady wasn't in it. Life would be better. Better if she was gone. No! Just relax. Relax. Relax. Don't get angry. Relax." His monologue—or internal dialogue—continued for several more minutes, alternating between trying to protect Captain Grady and wanting her dead. Wang seemed lost about what to do, and just let Masters continue.

Major Sonja Gracy didn't glance over as the door to Observation opened, although she was aware of the presence of NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. "Sonja," he finally said, touching her arm.

She turned to him, and instead of the expression of anger he half-expected to see, the only thing in her eyes was pity. "During OBC, we had this full day of introductions to the various medical specialties in the Army. At the end of the day, this one colonel, I forget who, stood up and said that you shouldn't pick your specialty based on the glamors of your life or as a way to try to avoid being deployed. He said that as we go through medical school, we should keep our eyes open for the worst things we can imagine, and go into the specialty that deals with whatever that is and try to make it better. For Shaena, that was always schizophrenia." She paused and looked back at Masters, still muttering to himself about her best friend and the things that she had done. "She said there wasn't anything she could imagine worse than a disease that took young men and women in the primes of their lives, at the height of their education, at the beginning of their careers, and reduced them to empty shells with barely even an external resemblance to the person they had been. It's almost impossible to treat, because when they have a break, there are voices telling them they can't trust anyone and the medicine is poison. When they're stable, they don't take the medicine because they either think they don't need it or they don't like the way it makes them feel—or it just doesn't work and they still hear those voices. They can't hold jobs, they can't do complex tasks, they can't form a thought that is completely linear. The suicide rate is astronomical, because they either hear voices that tell them to kill themselves or they realize in a lucid moment what has become of them and the promises their lives once held." He didn't need to be reminded of the discovery of Lieutenant Devlin Grady's suicide, a man who once had a promising career as an Army medical officer ripped from his grasp. "I have only heard of one person who was able to lead a successful life with schizophrenia, and that was John Nash." She paused, then a ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. "Oh, come on, Gibbs, you haven't even seen _A Beautiful Mind_?"

"Nope."

She nodded; that wasn't unexpected. "He was a mathematician, an economist, but he began to believe that newspapers, magazines, novels, radio—that everything was containing coded Soviet messages, and he was the only one capable of figuring them out. He lost years of his life, but somehow learned to have control over the visions and the voices and was rewarded a Nobel prize for his work. For most, that's impossible." She gestured toward Masters again. "For most, those voices and the people and demons they see control them, and they always will."

He didn't respond to that as he joined her in silently watching Wang attempt to speak to Masters. "What about you?" he finally asked. "What do you consider to be the worst thing there is?"

She turned back to face him, her again the determined mask he had seen her wear multiple times, and she answered him with one simple word: "Murder."


	23. Chapter 23: Conclusion

**Lethal Fractures: Chapter 23-Conclusion**

_A/N: Yes, you read that right: conclusion. I know 23 chapters seems incredibly short after some of my other stories (a 43 chapter opus I like to call "Of Jews and Gentiles" comes to mind), but it is what it is. I wish I could say that I have another story written and ready to be posted, but between trying to survive the last couple of months of medical school (!) and the story I've been posting on fictionpress, I haven't had much time for writing fanfiction. But I will be back :)_

_For those of you not familiar with military and medical jargon and acronyms, here are a few translations for this chapter:  
ROTC: Reserve Officer Training Corps  
Article 134: also known as a General Article. Offense subject to court martial, defined by the Uniform Code of Military Conduct  
NCOIC: Non-commissioned officer in charge  
Counter-tranference: in psychiatry, the therapist transferring his/her own experiences and emotions onto the patient. In other words, the therapist is not reacting to the patient's personality or problems, but rather to his/her own internal conflicts.  
2LT: Second Lieutenant, the lowest officer rank in the Army, Air Force, and Marines. All medical students sponsored by the Army and Air Force are second lieutenants (Ensign in the Navy is the equivalent rank)_

_Okay, I think that should do it. I hope you enjoyed the story, and I look forward to seeing you again soon (well, 'seeing' isn't the best word, but you know what I mean)._

* * *

Major Sonja Gracy stepped into the corner deli across the street from the medical center at Georgetown University, a slight smile on her face. It had been more than two years since she the last time she had been there, and fourteen years since the first, but in all of those years, nothing had changed. It hadn't become any more or any less classy in over a decade, but had remained what it always had been and always would be—a place for students and hospital staff alike to grab a quick meal during a short break or park for a couple of hours with a textbook and coffee cup that never seemed to empty.

"Good God, Sonja, you showed up in uniform?" Gracy swung around to find herself face-to-face with one of her best friends, both in the Army and outside of it. She had started the habit of meeting with Shaena O'Leary at least once a month for lunch back when her friend was a psychiatry intern at Walter Reed and she was a fourth year medical student at Georgetown, when they were Captain Shaena Grady and Second Lieutenant Sonja Gracy. In the decade that followed, they had completed their separate residencies, been sent on separate assignments, but somehow managed to find themselves back in the same city once again. "People are going to talk if they see me dining with an Army officer."

"Right," Gracy replied with a grin. "As if wallpapering your office with Army memorabilia wasn't enough." For a woman who had never had any enthusiasm for joining the Army and left as soon as she could, she was intensely proud of her service. "I see you're still continuing to have babies as if it's your job to do so." Her friend was six months pregnant with her fifth child, her previous four children ranging in age from seven—three months older than Nate Gracy—to twenty months, with a pair of three-and-a-half-year-old twins in the mix.

"I'm Catholic, Sonja. It _is_ my job to do so." She grinned. Robbie and Shaena O'Leary liked to joke about their kids being the result of the Catholic church's stance on birth control, but Gracy knew that they both came from large families and a multitude of children was always in the plan. "And I see you're still believing that two is enough."

"Kinda hard to have kids without a husband."

O'Leary waved dismissively. "No it's not. I used to see one or two eighteen- or nineteen-year old female privates a month who could tell you that." At Gracy's confused expression, she quickly explained, "First time away from home, feeling overwhelmed by joining the Army, and that sergeant over there is oh-so-helpful." She gave a quick grin. "They need to start issuing these girls birth control at basic training. But anyway, you look good, Sonja. Even with that beret line across your forehead."

Gracy's hand involuntarily flew to her forehead, where she knew from experience there was a straight red line from the pressure of her beret. Dr. O'Leary chuckled at the move, which had been the desired effect of the comment, forcing Gracy to admit defeat. "Oh, come on. I never laughed at you for beret lines."

"That's because you always had them, too." O'Leary grinned. "Robbie told me about the swim meet down in Norfolk. Jaelynn was quite impressed with Maddie's performance. I didn't have the heart to tell her that when it comes to the swimming pool, there's no way she'll be able to meet the standards of a Gracy." Both women had been collegiate swimmers, but their experiences were completely different: for Gracy, it had been an all-consuming facet of her four-years, as her continuing education depended on her ability to be the fastest one to the other end of the pool. O'Leary, having swam for Emory University, a Division III school in Atlanta, trained hard but studied harder—her scholarships came from her academic achievements, not her athletic ones. "My goodness, Sonja. I can't believe we're swim team moms together."

"God, don't remind me. I hate swim team moms." They both grinned before lapsing into silence, allowing Gracy to think back on their friendship over the years. Shaena had been the first person Gracy met in the Army, with the exception of Scott and his ROTC friends, and the two young women, put next to each other by the randomness of their similar last names on a hot afternoon in June, stuck together for those six weeks as they together tried to figure out this new experience and new life as Army officers. They were bound not just by their assignments as 'battle buddies', but also by their similar personalities and ironic humor that was often found among medical professionals. Their relationship had always had an aspect of depreciating humor, even in their serious moments. There was only one time that Gracy could remember when it had been any different. Shaena and her family had just moved back to DC from Eisenhower Army Medical Center, where she had finished her obligation to the Army after graduating from residency and being deployed to Iraq, to find her best friend widowed, on leave from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and close to finding herself admitted to the psych unit where O'Leary once worked. It was Shaena who convinced her to take a medical discharge from the Army and pay off her debt to the government as a CID agent, where her background in forensics would come in handy. "Civilian life still treating you well?" she asked to distract herself from such thoughts.

O'Leary snorted. "Right. I do the same job and now have to deal with insurance companies. I never should have left the Army. And it's not as if the pay raise was that great. Your parents are professors, you know what academia pay is like."

"Oh, don't give me that. Your husband is a glorified drug dealer, distributing Ritalin to the children of the nation's elite."

"Hey, someone's gotta pay the bills." And pay for the new wardrobe and stylish haircut, from the looks of it. "Have you given any thought to what you're going to do when you're done paying your time?"

Gracy shrugged. "I have ten months left, so I figure the job offers will start coming in three. I'll see what's out there and decide then." O'Leary nodded; she had gone through the same process a few years before. "But I'm going to try to stay in the area, whether that means leaving the Army or sticking with it."

"Well, you _did_ just move back. I can see not wanting to move the kids twice in a year."

"Yeah," Gracy replied, smiling at the waitress as she brought them their sandwiches. "And I've started seeing someone," she added casually.

"It's about time," O'Leary said dryly, then grinned. "That's great, Sonja. Serious?"

Gracy waffled her hand back and forth in a gesture of not knowing. "Too early to tell." At this point, it was hardly more than a couple of evenings of mostly-casual sex. "His track record with relationships sucks," she said bluntly. "He was married and lost his wife and daughter. Since then, he's been married and divorced three times."

"Ah." As a psychiatrist, it took a lot to surprise O'Leary. "Well, do what's good for you now. The rest will work itself out. What do the kids think of him?"

"They already think he's more fun than I am," she said, rolling her eyes. "He builds boats in his basement, so that must be the criteria for 'cool' these days. He's actually the NCIS agent who helped bring in Colonel Hauser and Musawi, so I think he had a lot to do with Maddie being the kid she is now. Oh! You'll get a chance to meet him. We're having a housewarming party-slash-BBQ on the tenth—Saturday. He'll be there, as will the rest of the NCIS team I worked with and a bunch of exciting AFIP-types. You and Robbie and the kids have to come."

"Of course," O'Leary replied with a grin. "The tenth—that's right after Scott and Nate's birthday, right? We'll bring a gift. Well, for Nate, of course." Nate Gracy had the distinction of sharing a birthday with his late father, which unfortunately for him, made the day somewhat bittersweet for the family.

They continued to chat about work and kids as they ate their lunches, easily slipping back into the familiar friendship despite the years apart. It wasn't until they were contemplating slices of pie for dessert that Gracy remembered that catching up with her old friend wasn't her only purpose for calling to arrange lunch. "You know I've started doing autopsies for CID again, right?"

"Well, I figured as much," O'Leary replied, "seeing as you are a forensic pathologist and all."

Gracy nodded. She still hadn't figured out how to break the news to her friend, even though it had been a week since Masters had been arrested for the murders of eight people and sent off to a psychiatric institution—hopefully to stay, but she knew how psych institutions worked. There were no life sentences, only 'treatment' until someone deemed the patient 'improved'. It was why Masters had kept getting out to kill more couples. She was hoping that the newly-discovered fact that he was killing people would encourage his new psychiatrists to keep him around a little bit longer this time. "We caught the guy responsible for those deaths of Army officers and their boyfriends," she finally said.

"Oh, I remember hearing about that. Broken necks, right?" She shuddered slightly. "You deal with a lot of wackos."

"Unfortunately, so do you." At O'Leary's confused expression, Gracy finished in a rush. "The killer was one of your former patients. A Sergeant Russell Masters."

"Oh, God," O'Leary murmured, her already fair skin blanching further.

"You remember him?"

O'Leary nodded miserably. "He was my first real failure as a psychiatrist," she admitted. "I've had quite a few since then, but you always remember your first. I was just a second-year resident when he was assigned to me. It was supposed to just be a routine evaluation for an Article 134."

"What for?"

"Insubordination, failure to follow orders, I don't remember exactly. His NCOIC gave one of those damned 'hooah' speeches as they were getting ready to go to Afghanistan—you know the ones. 'Raise your hand if you don't want to go kick some Taliban ass back to the dark ages where they belong' or some such crap." Gracy did know those speeches; she had overheard a first sergeant giving a similar speech to a group of infantry privates in Iraq, and couldn't help but wonder if that was the best message to be giving a bunch of nineteen-year-old boys. "Well, Masters raised his hand, which, as you can imagine, pissed off his NCOIC. In the course of working everything up, they sent him in for a psych eval. At first glance, he seemed perfectly normal, your typical twenty-something boy who thinks he's a man because somebody taught him how to kill with his bare hands. Then after talking to him some more, I realize that he's got all the classic features of schizophrenia—linear thinking, inability to comprehend sarcasm, even mild reactions to voices that weren't there, so instead of an Article 134, he gets a psych admission, and even though I was just a second-year, they kept me with him because we had established a 'rapport'." She shook her head slowly, her green eyes both sad and angry. "I was too damned inexperienced for that. Counter-transference, the curse of psychiatrists everywhere, was definitely present. I kept looking at Masters and seeing Dev." She paused and appeared to be collecting herself. "And then Dev killed himself, and I thought, if his sister's a psychiatrist and he still can't be helped, what chance does Masters have? And I worked harder."

"When did it get to be too much?" Gracy asked softly.

"Not too long after Dev died," O'Leary admitted. "I should have seen it coming sooner, but like I said, I was blinded by seeing what I wanted to see, on top of planning a wedding and dealing with my future mother-in-law about what caterer to use or some such thing." Gracy remembered that wedding—it was the last week of her internship, the end of O'Leary's—then Grady's—second year of residency. A massive affair in the greens and golds of a stereotypical Irish wedding, including the bridesmaid's dress that Gracy hated. The food was pretty good, as Gracy remembered, but not knowing if that was Shaena's caterer or the mother-in-law's, she didn't say anything. "I transferred his case to my attending after he started asking questions like what food I liked to eat or what I liked to do on the weekends or asking if I would be his girlfriend, of all the obscure questions. I told him that wasn't appropriate, but he obviously didn't get the message."

It was starting to make sense to Gracy—Masters had developed a crush or some sort of attachment on his psychiatrist, who obviously didn't return the sentiment. He hadn't taken the rejection very well, and in killing those women and their boyfriends, was killing Shaena and Robbie. "Did he ever meet Robbie?"

"God, Sonja, no!" O'Leary exclaimed. "_You're_ more likely to socialize with your patients than I am. And I certainly didn't bring my fiance in for show-and-tell."

Gracy shook her head. "There must have been some time," she insisted. "Some time when Robbie came to pick you up or stopped by to surprise you for lunch or something. Scott did it to me all the time."

O'Leary shrugged. "I guess," she said, unconvinced. "Oh, God. He took it as a romantic rejection and then somehow saw me and Robbie together and got jealous. And the Army did a pretty damn good job of teaching Masters how to kill."

"Yeah."

They sat in silence for a few long minutes, both thinking about how Masters had been symbolically killing Shaena over and over. "But why those women?" O'Leary finally asked. "There are hundreds of female officers in the DC area. Why those four?"

Gracy shrugged. "You're the shrink."

"There must have been something about them that reminded him of me, other than the uniform."

"The first one looked like you," Gracy said, wondering if she was being helpful. "But none of the other three even had a passing resemblance. And none were killed in uniform."

"I don't know," O'Leary said with a sigh as she reached into her purse in search for her wallet. "Knowing how schizophrenics' minds work—or rather, don't—it could have been anything." She fished her keys from her purse and set them on the table.

"God, Shaena, you're still using a lanyard with your keys?" Gracy asked in mock horror. "You're not a student anymore."

"It's the best way to keep from losing them," O'Leary said defensively as she fingered the Georgetown University lanyard. "Easy to fish out of the purse, too. And you should be proud of me—that seemingly endless supply of Army Healthcare lanyards has finally ran out, so I had to upgrade to a Georgetown one."

"Yeah, because pulling a blue Georgetown lanyard out of a Coach purse is much classier than a black Army one," Gracy said sarcastically. She could remember a twenty-three-year-old 2LT Shaena Grady swinging her black Army Healthcare lanyard—one of the countless little items given to prospective Army recruits and current scholarship students alike—in her hands while impatiently waiting for the world's slowest elevators, in the Bachelor Officer Quarters at Ft. Sam Houston. Suddenly, she was faced with another memory, or rather, four of them—evidence sheets from crime scenes that she had glanced at. Four ID holders on keyrings, all attached to lanyards. She started to laugh, not at amusement, but at the absurdity of it all. "Oh, God," she finally managed, breathless in her near-hysterics. "It's the damned lanyard."

"What?"

"They all kept their ID's and keys on lanyards," Gracy explained. "All four of them. Masters must have seen them at some point—maybe around Walter Reed, where they would come for routine care, maybe somewhere else—swinging their damned lanyards, just like you always do. It must have been enough to set him off."

"God." O'Leary stared in horror at the seemingly innocent strip of cloth in her hand before she started to giggle. Their laughter started to get attention from the other diners, but they ignored them. "I knew lanyards were childish, but I had never considered it an instrument of death until now."

"If there's one thing I've learned in my line of work, just about anything can be an instrument of death."

O'Leary chuckled slightly, shaking her head in wonder before she glanced back up at her friend. "My God, Sonja, I'm glad you're back."

"Yeah, all that happiness and sunshine was such a drag. Nothing like a good old serial killer to say 'welcome home'."

O'Leary shook her head. "No, that's not what I meant. I'm glad you're back in DC and all, but what I mean is, I'm glad _you're_ back to being _you_. I've missed you, buddy. I don't know if it's the time that's gone by, or the Hawaiian 'vacation', or this new guy that you have, but… welcome back."

**The End**


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